Weird situation, changed over from an ATA hard drive to a Sata hard drive for my Asterisk server.
Everything else on the server is exactly the same, just the hard drive was changed over basically when installing the iso i get an error message on the install screen: " Loading ata_piix driver " that just hangs.
i thought it was a cable not seated problem or a bent sata cable etc etc…fut fut fut around nope same problem.
Google is your friend and i found this post http://fonality.com/trixbox/node/40362 to hit F4 then enter ‘linux irqpoll’ however…for me it screwed up the installation with lots of errors.
Another solution i ended up trying is at installation hit F4 then enter LINUX NOPROBE - didn’t solve the problem for me either.
I ended up finding this post - " Linux SATA problem with Abit IP35-E " http://codeandlife.com/2008/05/22/linux-sata-problem-with-abit-ip35-e/ and although i use ABIT IP35-pro’s this ended up being the solution for me.
Turns out all I needed was to swap SATA cable from SATA1 port to SATA5 or SATA6. Now everything works great.
Unfortunately, we lose one of the main benefits to SATA technology when we do this– NCQ. Putting it in port 5 or 6 tells it to operate in PATA mode. Linux recognizes this.
Everything is back up and running but times like this i think Linux is a PITA… I’m surprised this isn’t written about in more places or is it specific to my Abit IP35 motherboard?