Re: 2 SCSI Cards, No Booting

[ABrady <kcsmart kc rr com>]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001 23:07:28 -0400 cbsled ncia net imparted to us:

> Redhat support hasn't solved this one after trying for ten days.
> 
> This standalone system has two SCSI cards, an Adaptec 2940U2W PCI with
> two hd's et al on 
> it, and an Adaptec 1520B ISA card running an external Zip drive and a 
> scanner. It was set up this way to solve bus lockups which occurred
> under OS/2 when 
> the slower devices were attached to the fast card.  The system was
> running 
> well with RH6.2. The 1520 was set up with an "append=..." statement in
> modules.conf, since it was installed after 6.2.
> 
> After upgrading to 7.1, the system wouldn't boot without help. Redhat
> support 
> recommended running an install instead of an upgrade, which I did. The
> problem persists. 
> 
> The installation program apparently failed to detect the 
> 1520. The Zip drive was not listed by Disk Druid, even though I had an
> ext2-formatted disk in it at the time. On the first reboot after the
> install, 
> the system failed to boot. It detected the 1520 before the 2940, and
> so 
> assigned /dev/sda to the Zip drive. The first hd turned into sdb, so
> it can't 
> find root (/). Disk Druid had it as sda, and / is supposed to be sda9.
> 
> I have tried rearranging the lines in modules.conf to put the aic7xxx
> driver 
> first, as suggested by RH support, but the system still detects the
> 1520 
> first. The bios detects it first as well, BTW. The first three lines
> of 
> Modules.conf were:
> 
> alias scsi_hostadapter aic7xxx
> alias scsi_hostadapter aha152x
> options scsi_hostadapter aha152x=0x340,11,7
> 
> I tried using the following at the beginning of lilo.conf:
> 
> disk=/dev/sda
> 	bios=0x81
> disk=/dev/sdb
> 	bios=0x82
> disk=/dev/sdc
> 	bios=0x80
> 
> When run, /sbin/lilo complained: "Warning: /dev/sda8 is not on the
> first disk"
> Note:(sda8 is /boot)
> 
> This rendered the system unbootable except in rescue mode.
> 
> The problem occurs regardless of the presence or lack of a disk in the
> Zip 
> drive. The system boots fine if the Zip drive is unplugged, since sda
> is sda 
> then.
> 
> I removed the "...aha152x..." lines from modules.conf, ran depmod-a,
> then rebooted. 
> The system still detects the 1520, and does so before finding the
> 2940, so no change.
> 
> If you devise a fix that works, you'll be able to brag that you beat
> Redhat 
> tech support, so have at it.
> 
> Is this a bug in the installation program?

I care less if I beat anybody or not. I simply hope I don't make a fool
of myself.

Have you tried moving the PCI adapter to another slot to try making the
BIOS see it first? Are you using an initrd? If so, there may be a
problem within that and I'd have no idea how to fix it. But, if you can
get that changed to list the devices in the order you need it might
help.

I'd suggest making a bootdisk and modifying syslinux.cfg with an append
line for the order you want the devices detected as well as the disk
shenanigans you need to make sda and sdb turn out as you want them (if
none of the above stuff works, that is). If that works, it should just
be a matter of getting it right in the initrd or dumping the initrd
altogether and using append statements in lilo.conf. Or, as I do, use a
bootdisk (f$%#in' geometry!).

-- 
To boldly go where I surely don't belong.