RHEL4 and AIC7899

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 17:48 +0100, Oliver wrote:
> >>
> >> during the first boot from the install CD of RHEL4AS, die system hangs
> >> while trying the module aic7xxx. It's installed an AIC7899 dualchannel
> >> onboard in the server (IBM IntelliPro M [6850]). Ther are no IDE
> >> harddisk
> >> devices in the computer.
> >
> > It sometimes takes a while for the aic7xxx driver to load up on the
> > initial install (it has to do a SCSI bus reset, then a spinup, then a
> > probe of the drives).  This has been known to take over three minutes
> > in some cases.  Did you wait that long?
> 
> Hi Rick,
> 
> I've waited more than 30 minutes... Just tested the Server with other
> Linux versions like Knoppix_3.8 and with WindowsXP. Knoppix took 30
> seconds for probing...
> 
> So I don't know, why RHEL4 doesn't recognize the controller correctly.

Hmmm.  Have you tried installing in text mode and checking the output
on the other three consoles (ALT-F2, ALT-F3, ALT-F4) to see if there's
something displayed there that might give a clue?

You didn't say if the CD was IDE or not (it may well be).  If that's the
case, you might also try installing with DMA disabled for the IDE bus:

	boot: linux ide=nodma

and see if that helps.
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