I upgraded from kernel 2.6.5 to kernel 2.6.9 because I was getting DMA errors when ripping CD’s to disc. I was also getting major errors with the SATA disk when copying the CD’s to my mp3 player so I have bit the bullet and decided to try and upgrade.
During boot I came across what I thought was some king of bug. When I rebooted the kernel fsck complained about a bad file system, no indication as to which device just the error message.
I logged back in and my SATA disk was gone. It had not been mounted during boot which was a bit of a bummer. I had a look at the dmesg output and lo and behold it is now a SCSI device and my three old mount points are now invalid. I am using the VIA controller ie
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VIA=y
in my config. I find these changes very disconcerting but then I am not a kernel hacker. I wonder if there is an easy way to see changes like this without having to read through tons of Change logs. Its even worse when you are jumping several versions.
Kernel upgrades, like life are is just full of little surprises.