Hard disk drivers at bootup with new kernel

[Bob Chiodini]

On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 11:09 -0500, Randy Grimshaw wrote:
> 
> 
> <><Randall Grimshaw
> Room 203 Machinery Hall
> Syracuse University
> Syracuse, NY   13244
> 315-443-5779
> rgrimsha at syr.edu
> 
> >>> ptho at firefly.nlm.nih.gov 2/23/2006 10:19 AM >>>
> > We have a High Point Sata controller. When we boot up with an updated 
> > kernel, the OS reports that it cannot find the disk.
> 
> > How do we tell the new kernel at boot up where to find the driver?
> 
> > Details: grub can see the available kernels; booting on the old kernel 
> > works; booting with the new kernel gives the cannot find disk message.
> 
> vaugely described: (because our situations do not match exactly)
> What we have discovered with rhel is that it is neccessary to compile the kernel with certain drivers linked statically - rather than as modules. This was not neccessary with fc4 in our case so ymmv.
> 
> 
> 

Phillip,

You didn't mention if this is a RAID configuration, but take a look at:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=278236

It explains what is happening and how this user's problem was resolved.
It also hints at the configuration of the /etc/modprobe.conf file.  In
short, you need a line, in /etc/modprobe.conf) similar to the following:

alias scsi_hostadapter <the High Point's module name>

Even though it's not a SCSI controller.

Then you will need to rebuild the initrd file for the kernel of interest
with mkinitrd.  I think the installation of the new kernel should have
done this for you, if you used yum or rpm to install the new kernel.  If
you built the kernel from kernel.org then "make install" should have
built the initrd.  In either case /etc/modprobe.conf needs the "alias
scsi_hostadapter" entry.

Hope this helps.

Bob...