IDE DMA Blacklist?

[Daniel Robitaille]

> > > > Since I know that DMA works on that drive under Warty, is there a way
> > > > to override or modify that blacklist?
> > >
> > > The blacklist lives in $kernel_source/drivers/ide/ide-dma.c but I
> > > wouldn't recommend changing that table in the first instance. There
> > > might be a kernel parameter for this.
> 
> > I'm not planning in recompiling by kernel just for this.  I have 2 cd-drives
> > in that machine, and the other one's dma works fine (and it's a newer
> > drive anyway).  But it's a slight annoyance
> > in the transition from Warty to Hoary.  I should probably report it in
> > the bugzilla.
> 
> As a fixed bug?
> 
> The reason it is blacklisted is that someone believed it was
> unreliable enough that they submitted a patch to get it added to the
> blacklist - so if anything this is a bug fix.

actually  It seems the drive is in the black list due to historical
reasons, and not really because of someone finding a problem with it,
and it is still in the blacklist  probably because it is an older
hardware and nobody has bothered checking it out since. That's the
hint you get by looking at some semi-recent posts on the linux-kernel
mailing list, like:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/242226
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/261869

But at the end of the day the only thing I know for sure from personal
experience of using that drive for 6 months with DMA on (in both
Fedora Core 1 and Warty), is that it seems to work fine for my
computer.

Maybe I should attempt to recompile the kernel to remove it for that
blacklist afterall.  After years using Linux, I have been looking for
an excuse to attempt to run my own compiled kernel.  Maybe this is my
chance :)