freebsd 7 with sata drives

[Brian]

Brian wrote:
> The board in question is an Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI.  I have tried the 
> instructions for a safe kernel compile in /usr/src/updating also.  
> Even after that, the kernel starts to load, but the root partition 
> cant be found, and I am left at a mountroot> prompt.  If I go 
> ufs:ad5s1a, that fails as well.
>
> Brian
>
I have done much more testing on this.  With a pata drive all is well.  
I can install 7.0-release and run freebsd-update successfully including 
the subsequent reboots.  However, over the weekend I tried to go to 
stable again, and still, the subsequent reboot leaves me at a mountroot 
prompt.  If I go ufs:ad8s1a  at the prompt the root partition, of course 
I dont want to have to do this each time.  If I use the september 
snapshot, the sata disk is visible.  I just tried to run and iinstall a 
6.4 prerelease, and then did a make buildworld && make kernel 
KERNCONF=SMP and that worked successfully.  I see this behavior with a 
160 gig wd disk as well as a 74 gig raptor(This weekend's test hardware).

Brian