[Voyage-linux] Voyage not working on Soekris 4501 anymore due to IDE driver not found

[Etienne Favey]

Dear all,

In the recent versions of Voyage, i.e. all versions after lenny,
the build will not work on a Soekris 4501 anymore, as it will not find its root file system
on the CF disk.

My investigations have led me to believe, that the ide-generic driver is only available
as a module, but it must be compiled into the kernel for it to find the IDE and CF disk at boot time.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to tell the kernel by any command line parameter to load that
module. The parameter all_generic_ide will also not yield the desired effect of having the module
loaded. In the current build I alyways have to "modprobe ide-generic" on the console whenever the
kernel complains about not finding a root file system, so that the module is loaded.

Would it be possible to have the ide-generic compiled in again in a fixed manner for future voyage
versions? This would be very helpful so I do not have to go through the pain of recompiling the
kernel for the voyage distro. Or did I miss any other way of making it work?

Thanks,
Etienne