The computer running the deuxpi.ca domain had an extra hard disk installed since last November but I did not have a chance to use it because I didn't have a SATA cable for it. The disk was finally connected yesterday. However, the system did not recognize the disk. Also, the kernel was using a driver named "pata_marvell" (thus not, for example, "sata_marvell") for the controller.

After some research on the Internet, I found that the kernel loads the ahci driver which then delegates to the sata_marvell driver in order to support legacy PATA drives on this controller. Alan Cox introducted a kernel option to prevent this default behavior so the ahci driver would be used to drive the SATA ports. In my case, the Marvell controller is used only for SATA. See the thread for some history about SATA support for the Marvell 88SE6121.

To use this kernel option on a Ubuntu system, edit the grub configuration:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Add ahci.marvell_enable=1 to the line of standard kernel options. For example:

# kopt=root=/dev/mapper/vg0-root ro ahci.marvell_enable=1

This line may be slightly different on another system depending on the partitioning scheme. Save the file, run sudo update-grub, and reboot the computer for this option to have effect.

Edit: See the Debian wiki page about enabling support for the Marvell SATA controller using possibly a better method.