Adaptec AHA1540/2 SCSI card and 5 drives...

[Rick Stevens]

Mark Christy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I hope someone can help. I am setting up RH6.2 (i know
> i know), on an older system with an Adaptec AHA1540/2
> scsi card. I formatted all the drives (4x 1G and one
> small 350MB drive) with fdisk under dos 6.22 and
> everything works great.
> 
> When I run the installer and get to the 'Ok, now click
> next to install the whole sheeeebang', the installer
> says it can't find any filesystems. I never get to the
> pick your volumes, etc...
> 
> Do I need SCSI drivers to load at the 'load drivers
> screen' right off the bat???? 

You shouldn't need to.  The 1540 is an older controller (an ISA board
if I'm right).  If the installer showed you disks at all (they'd
be called "sda1", "sda2" etc.), then the driver is loaded (you should
have seen something like "Loading aha1542 driver" in a blue box when the
installer was loading).

The problem probably is that there's no free space on the drives.  You
said you formatted the drives under DOS 6.22, which means you created a
bunch of DOS (called "FAT") partitions.  Linux wants either Linux
partitions or uncommitted (free) space.  When you tell Linux to
autopartition, it can't because all of the space on the drives is
committed to these DOS (FAT) partitions.

Instead of autopartitioning, select each drive individually and delete
ALL of the FAT partitions on them.  You can then either manually set
up your partitions or allow Linux to autopartition.  The important
thing is that you need empty space.

And you really should use a later version of Red Hat.  6.2 is truly
ancient and uses the old 2.2-series kernels which are much slower and
less secure than the 2.4-series. Download Red Hat 9 or Fedora Core and
install that.  If you don't have the ability to download or burn CDs,
let me know by private email and I'll send you a set by snail mail.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-      Batteries not included.  Offer not valid in some states.      -
-           Your mileage may vary.  Void where prohibited.           -
----------------------------------------------------------------------