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Comment: Explains how to use the Marvell 88SE6121 on an Asus M2V motherboard.
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Using the Marvell 88SE6121 controller with an internal SATA disk

Reference: http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/9/2/272

The procedure given below explains the steps that were taken to use the Marvell 88SE6121 controller on an Asus M2V motherboard.

To begin, in the BIOS, the Marvell controller should be enabled. When enabled, the output of the command lspci -nn should include a line resembling:

06:00.0 IDE interface [0101]: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE6121 SATA II Controller [11ab:6121] (rev b1)

The Marvell 88SE6121 can control parallel ATA devices, but on the Asus M2V, no parallel ATA connectors are connected to the Marvell controller. As a result of this, the pata_marvell kernel module should be disabled. This can done be including, in the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.local, the line:

install pata_marvell /bin/true

Additionally, the ahci kernel module must be loaded, and it should use the option marvell_enable. The module seems to load automatically on Debian 5.0 (lenny.) In order to use the marvell_enable option, the file /etc/modprobe.d/options.local should include the line:

options ahci marvell_enable=1

At this point, the initramfs image should be re-created with the command:

update-initramfs -u

Upon rebooting, it should be possible to use a SATA disk connected to the Marvell controller. Depending on whether, and how, the operating system was configured prior to enabling the Marvell controller, re-ordering disks in the BIOS may be necessary.