RHEL4 and AIC7899

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Mon Nov 14 17:31:57 UTC 2005


On Sat, 2005-11-12 at 14:21 +0100, Oliver wrote:
> >> >> during the first boot from the install CD of RHEL4AS, die system hangs
> >> >> while trying the module aic7xxx. It's installed an AIC7899 dualchannel
> >> >> onboard in the server (IBM IntelliPro M [6850]). Ther are no IDE
> >> >> harddisk
> >> >> devices in the computer.
> >> >
> >> > It sometimes takes a while for the aic7xxx driver to load up on the
> >> > initial install (it has to do a SCSI bus reset, then a spinup, then a
> >> > probe of the drives).  This has been known to take over three minutes
> >> > in some cases.  Did you wait that long?
> >> 
> >>
> >> I've waited more than 30 minutes... Just tested the Server with other
> >> Linux versions like Knoppix_3.8 and with WindowsXP. Knoppix took 30
> >> seconds for probing...
> >> 
> >> So I don't know, why RHEL4 doesn't recognize the controller correctly.
> 
> > Hmmm.  Have you tried installing in text mode and checking the output
> > on the other three consoles (ALT-F2, ALT-F3, ALT-F4) to see if there's
> > something displayed there that might give a clue?
> > You didn't say if the CD was IDE or not (it may well be).  If that's the
> > case, you might also try installing with DMA disabled for the IDE bus:
> >         boot: linux ide=nodma
> 
> Now I downloaded the RHEL4AS Upd2 CDs and tried to install from them. I've
> started the installation at the boot prompt with    linux ide=nodma text
> There is one CD-ROM drives on each IDE channel.
> 
> Like before, it seems(?) to hang.
> Here are the screens...
> 
> Installation screen shows:
>   loading aic7xxx driver
> Alt-F3 shows:
>   loaded e100 from /modules/
>   loaded aic7xxx from /modules
>   inserted /tmp/mii.ko
>   inserted /tmp/e100.ko
> Alt-F4 shows:
>   (6)e100: eth0: e100_probe: addr ...
>   (6)ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:03:01.0[A] -> GSI 10 (level low) -> IRQ 10
>   (6)ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:03:01.1[B] -> GSI 10 (level low) -> IRQ 10
>   (6)scsi0: Adaptec AIC7xxx EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.36
>   (4)       (Adaptec aic7899 Ultra160 SCSI adapter)
>   (4)       aic7899: Ultra160 Wide Channel A, SCSI id=7, 32/253 SCBs
>   (4)
> 
> Hope you can help me and you have an idea :)!?

Well, it's obvious the driver loaded and recognizes your controller.
It's NOT seeing the drives, however, and that's where the problem lies.

Stupid question, but are you 100% certain you a) have the SCSI bus
terminated correctly, and b) have the drives spinning up?  Get into the
SCSI BIOS and make sure it starts the drives at power up (disable the
"SCSI START/STOP" stuff).

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     Veni, Vidi, VISA:  I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.     -
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