The fit-pc2 uses the Intel US15W (Poulsbo) chipset which includes the ide controller. It seem this chipset is not supported by centos. The ramifications of this lack of support include:

1. No dma. Disk write speeds are ~2.2MB p/ sec
   
   Code:

   /dev/hda:
   Timing buffered disk reads:    8 MB in  3.51 seconds =   2.28 MB/sec
   
2. improper (read=no) shutdown of the hard drive which conserves energy and helps keep the unit cool. (my unit runs to hot to touch for more than 3-4 seconds). this is the error:
   
   Code:

   hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
   ide: failed opcode was: unknown
   hda: no DRQ after issuing MULTWRITE_EXT
   ide0: reset: success
   

Please let me know if there is a solution for this issue.

Which hard disk did you use?
I don't know whether it is important or no, but this chipset has only PATA controller, not SATA. According to the Intel's spec.

i used the compulab included hd, whatever that is. From my understanding, the translation from pata to sata is invisible to the system, hence, if I cant cant set dma, is because the system cant relate to the chips set - irrelevant on the HD itself

What CentOS version did you use? I plan to install CentOS myself soon.

5.3 (I used the asteriskNOW iso). Let me know how it goes!

Could you try this distributive?
http://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/linux/redhat ... 5xx-US15W/

I understand that it's not a AsteriskNOW, but, may be it will work.

P.S. I'm actually interesting in fit-pc2 to be my router/firewall/sql/web-server, and I prefer rpm-based distributive.

Same ehre, but I already have my server up and running (although without dma), so I'de rather not reinstall it now. Anyone else? Perhaps tehre is some driver/kmod that we can extract?

It seems that support the for ide controler was added to the linux kerner about version 2.6.25. Here is a link to said module. Perhaps someone can compile it for 2.6.18-128.1.1.el5?

UPDATE: Said module was first publicly released in kernel 2.6.26

hmm, I wonder if there isnt a problem with the hd itself. I've had to recover many times from journal error's. I get this error:

I've managed to compile what I believe is the appropriate module (taken from the 2.6.30 kernel) agents 2.6.18-128.1.10.el5. After doing modprobe libata, I can load the module with insmod pata_sch.ko

However, here I still cannot enable dma. Here is the demsg output:


Attached is the compiled module