Cannot get Knoppix 3.2 to recognize an Adaptec AIC-7902 SCSI

[Dave_Bechtel]

--An easier solution might be to get a cheap IDE HD of 2.3Gig or slightly more, and install to there. Or at least boot the kernel from there... See ' man syslinux '. This is what I ended up doing for my pastor's box. System is installed and running on SCSI but kernel boots from a cheap 540MB IDE with Syslinux. syslinux.cfg points to sdaX as root. /etc/fstab is all SCSI but uses the fat32 IDE for critical-bkp files (/etc, /root, stuff like that.)

--Once the system is up and running off IDE, you can load the aic79xx driver and do stuff with SCSI.

--Hmm, I just thought of something; is your sda device 0 on the SCSI chain? It usually has to be 0 to boot from it.

--AFA the module/compiled in goes, it SHOULD work if you compiled it in. If not, you have to mess with the mkinitrd, which has never been a good situ for me.

--Let Adaptec know that their source wouldn't compile. BTW, how do you know the fault-tolerant and other stuff failed to work? If that's so you should email the driver maintainer.

--Keep trying, and keep us informed... This is getting interesting.

Thanks Dave,

Using another computer, I grabbed the 2.4.20 source from Kernel.org. When I downloaded the aic79xx source from Adaptec and copied it into the drivers/scsi/aic7xxx directory, the kernel wouldn't compile. When I copied the source from the first link you provided into the same location, it compiled just fine. First I did a make xconfig, went into the SCSI low-level menu, selected the aic79xx driver (as a module), saved the config, make dep, make modules, make modules_install, and show-nuff, I had the aic79xx.o file sitting there. I copied that to a floppy, booted the Knoppix 3.2 CD (2003-05-20), typed expert at the "boot:" prompt, loaded the aic79xx driver from the floppy and now knx-hdinstall was able to install onto one of the SCSI drives.

Later I tried messing with the SCSI card BIOS's settings by choosing fault tollerant and mirror options and neither of them worked. It seems the aic79xx.o module only works with that controller when the drives are just drives (no HW RAID support at all).

The fun and games doesn't stop there. After installing onto the SCSI HD, I copied the kernel source to the HD, copied the aic79xx module source, and ran make xconfig from /mnt/sda1/usr/src/linux-2.4.20 to set the kernel options for the soon-to-be-built booting kernel. I selected the aic79xx option Y (not M for module), plus selected the ext3 file system and a few other things like the Ethernet controller. When the kernel built, it couldn't copy bzImage to /vmlinuz because the root path is the CD. I manually copied bzImage to /mnt/sda1/vmlinuz_aic79xx. Next I adjusted /mnt/sda1/etc/lilo.conf to be able to find the kernel and ensure lilo used /dev/sda1, and ran lilo -r /mnt/sda1/. I then rebooted on the SCSI HD.

When the kernel was booting it displayed lots of text, then it died. One of the last few lines said, 'VFS: Cannot open root device "sda1" or 08:01'. Then another message said, "kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:01".

Why isn't this working? I even tried hitting left shift at the lilo prompt, then typing "linux root=/dev/sda1".

[BillyBobber]

Thanks for your efforts.

This is a 1U rack-mount Gateway server and there isn't much room for mounting additional IDE units. That's the problem with all of these rack-mount servers from different manufacturers is they all use SCSI cards and Knoppix works best with IDE drives with little (older) SCSI support built in.

It seems the aic-79xx module works fine as a module, but not built directly into the kernel. While this works well enough to get Knoppix to install onto the HD, it doesn't do much for booting from the HD.

Yes, sda is device 0. These off-the-shelf units come that way so there shouldn't be any issues. In fact, it boots enough to load the kernel and begin executing all the start-up goodies, but then it dies when it attempts to mount the root fs.

Granted, the aic79xx module SHOULD work either as a module or built into the kernel, but since it's so new I may be the only person on the planet that has actually attempted the built-in version. Either the driver doesn't work when built in, or I've screwed up the kernel some other way -- which I don't see how...but...

I know the fault tolerant and mirror methods don't work because when I use the Adaptec card's BIOS to change them around, fdisk can't find the drives. Perhaps the drive becomes /dev/whoknowswhat and knx-hdinstall doesn't know what to pass into fdisk? Regardless, if I can't get them to work as regular disk drives, adding the RAID layer on top isn't going to help.

I think it comes down to 2 possibilities. Either I didn't build the kernel correctly or the aic79xx driver from the link up above (3 messages) is broken.

[dayalp]

It seems the aic-79xx module works fine as a module, but not built directly into the kernel. While this works well enough to get Knoppix to install onto the HD, it doesn't do much for booting from the HD.

I have an Adaptec AIC-7901 SCSI controller with one SCSI disk attached to it on a new Dell Precision 670. I just used the aic79xx source from the link provided by Dave to detect my SCSI controller and disk with knoppix. Did you manage to get your computer to boot from the SCSI hard disk using this driver ?? I will be attempting to install the 2.4.27 kernel-source with the above mentioned aic79xx module source overwritten on it.

Could you please let me know if you have managed boot debian from your hard disk ?

Thanks a lot.