[lug] Adding 2nd SCSI card

[D. Stimits]

Gary Hodges wrote:
> I'll try and keep it short and sweet.
> 
> We have:
> Tyan dual Athlon w/two 2000+ installed
> Adaptec 29160 card installed in a 64 bit slot
> RH v7.3 2.4.18-10smp kernel
> 
> The machine seems to be very stable.  I ran kernel compiles over a
> weekend (~2000) without any trouble.  A few weeks ago we installed an
> IDE RAID tower, and about one week ago we finally got around to
> configuring it.  I wasn't intimately involved in this step so bear with
> me.  There were problems encountered when mkfs was run and when we tried
> to make a directory on the tower.  It is configured as RAID5.  The
> machine would be brought to its knees when mkfs of mkdir was executed. 
> Mouse wouldn't move, etc.  OK, I'm trying to keep it short and sweet.  
> 
> In an attempt to figure out if the problem was RAID tower or
> machine/card
> related, we thought we would pick up another SCSI adapter (LSI Logic
> U160), plug the tower into that and see if we got the same errors.  With
> the LSI card in the 1st slot and the Adaptec in the 2nd slot I saw both
> SCSI BIOS'
> during the pre-boot stuff, but I couldn't get the machine to boot up. 
> When I
> switched the cards I only saw the Adaptec BIOS, but the machine
> booted.  During
> the boot the LSI card was detected and configured. If I put only the LSI
> card in I get into the Linux boot process but it fails with a Kernel
> Panic suggesting that I may need some init= boot parameters.
> 
> In the spirit of "short and sweet", what am I missing about getting the
> machine to boot from the LSI card?  At this point I'd like to just try
> it out without the Adaptec card.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Gary
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Items to check would be that you built support as a module, and included 
the module in the mkinitrd; that your version of mkinitrd (or anything 
related in kernel docs subdirectory Documentation/, file Changes, is up 
to date). Be sure that your kernel and the motherboard bios are 
configured correctly with respect to whether to probe all LUN's or not. 
Be sure that if you place a boot controller as a 2nd controller, that 
your bios is set to boot offboard devices first. If there are two 
offboard devices, you might have to have one before the other, and not 
have a choice about that when one of the offboard devices contains a 
boot sector. Check that any scsi ID jumpers are correct, and that they 
do not interfere with the scsi ID of the controller itself, nor with the 
raid tower. Check all terminators. Be sure cable lengths are not too 
long. For anything IDE, be sure you do not have the wrong DMA 
settings...be conservative to start.

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi.com