Installing SCSI driver in Linux Rescue

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 22:17 -0500, John Wirt wrote:
> A new front has opened in my endeaver to install Grub in the Linux root 
> ("/") partition of drive 2 as part of a move to dual boot  Linux RedHat 
> Enterprise and XP on my machine using Bootit on drive 1 as the boot 
> manager. XP is on drive 1 and Linux is on drive 1. From Rick Stevens and 
> others on this forum (thank you), I know the procedure and Linux 
> commands to accomplish the necessary reinstallation of Grub.
> 
> Last night I attempted to reinstall Grub using these commands but 
> immediately ran into a problem. I have three Adaptec U320 drives on the 
> machine. Two are combined into one RAID 0 drive (drive 1) and Linux will 
> be on the third physical drive (drive 2).
> 
> I booted to the 1st RedHat Enterprise v.3 CD, selected Linux Rescue, and 
> got the boot: prompt (I think this was the order). Anyway I ended up at 
> the Boot: prompt in Linux Rescue.   Fine except in the course of this 
> boot it was clear that Linux could not find any drivers for my SCSI 
> drives on the CD. This is not surprising. When I installed XP, I had to 
> supply drivers. (Linux came installed on the machine by Dell.)
> 
> The question is, how can I provide the necessary driver in booting from 
> the Linux RedHat CD #1.

At the "boot:" prompt, enter:

	linux rescue dd

When the system asks for the driver, stick in the floppy and press
ENTER.

> 
> Dell has sent me the drivers that need to be installed. The driver 
> package seems to have the solution:
> 
>     Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
>     For a new installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, you will need to
>     use a device driver diskette image. Perform the following steps:
>       1. Copy the appropriate device driver diskette image to a Linux system
>       2. Put a floppy into the floppy drive
>       3. At a command prompt, type "cat dd if=<image name> of=/dev/fd0". 
> This
>           will create your device driver diskette
>       4. Boot to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 media
>       5. When you receive the "boot:" prompt, type "linux dd"
>       6. Follow the instructions onscreen to proceed
> 
> Will this work?

For a fresh install, yes.  To do a rescue boot, you still need to
specify "rescue" in the boot command:

	boot: linux rescue dd

> 
> After loading the SCSI driver, I have to run the   install-grub  command 
> from Boot: to complete the Linux (re)installation.
> 
> Apparently, I have to go to my friend's house and have him make the 
> device driver diskette (my friend is a Linux technician). Then, I can 
> load the driver from the disketter at the Boot: command.

Well, you really don't.  True, "dd" is a Unix/Linux-specific command,
but there is a program under DOS that does the same thing, "rawrite". 
Here's a link to it:

    http://www.fdos.org/ripcord/rawrite/


> Will this work?  Since the Linux running in memory from the CD sees no 
> SCSI drives, where  will it  put the driver? In memory? And then, boot 
> the SCSI drives? Is this going to work?

Yes, the driver will be loaded in to the kernel's memory on boot.  Once
the driver is loaded, the rescue boot will be able to see the SCSI
drives and you should be good to go.

> The copy of Linux already installed on drive 2 has the necessary SCSI 
> driver. The desired final configuration will be, selecting Linux from 
> the Bootit boot menu will "boot" Grub in the root partition on drive 2, 
> which will boot Linux on drive 2.

If you're certain the driver is actually there, after you do the
"chroot /mnt/sysimage" command, look at the "/etc/modules.conf" file
and make sure there's a line that looks like

	alias scsi-hostadapter name-of-scsi-driver

because that's what the mkinitrd command will use to load the
appropriate driver into the boot ramdisk image.

> Just to be complete, the final configuration is planned to be:
> 
>       Drive 1
>          Part 1   MBR   XP
>          Part 2   Windows XP
>          Part 3   EMBR  (Extended Master Boot Record for Bootit boot 
> manager)
>          Part 4  Extended Partition
>          Part 5     Volume
>          Part 6     Volume
> 
>       Drive 2  (simplified a bit)
>          Part 1   MBR
>          Part 2   Linux  /boot partition
>          Part 3   Linux root directory
>          Part 4   Linux swap partition

Your Linux tech friend may be able to help you with this.  He/she should
understand all this weird stuff with booting and how to make it work.
It's a bit difficult to describe in an email.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-          When all else fails, try reading the instructions.        -
----------------------------------------------------------------------