On Monday 10 February 2003 13:32 pm, Steve Miller wrote:

Hi,

The below are just my opinions on the matter... and I am not running SuSE 8.1. (gave up on it)

I am getting ready to try an Adaptec PCI SCSI adapter with SuSE 8.1 and am a little confused by the various threads I have found on the subject in the MARC archives and by what SuSE itself says about support in their own hardware database. To clear things up, I pose these questions. I'd be elated to have a definite answer to any of them....

(1) There seems to be trouble with a "new" aic7xxx driver for Adaptec cards, with some saying that they use the "old" driver. Is this the aic7xxx_old I seem to have in my kernel module directory? (The kernel and drivers I have are the ones compiled by SuSE and installed automatically.)

I have had much trouble with the 'new' aic7xxx module. The new one was written by Adaptec, the old by someone at RedHat. I once had an install of 8.0 fail on reboot on a 2940UW controller and I was able to salvage it by getting in there with the rescue DVD and rebuilding the kernel to use the 'old' module. Shouldn't be necessary but it is.

(2) Apparently, the new driver requires a kernel without the apic module, but this (lack of apic) chokes VMWare. Does using the old driver obviate this problem?

Guess I wasn't aware of the VMWare problem and I do run VMware. Another bullet dodged by using the old module. No problems with the old module.

(3) More specifically, has anyone had luck with the following card: AHA-2930CU? (The box labels it twice, the other label reading "AHA-2930U", which SuSE lists as "fully" supported.

Don't have one of those. 2940's of all kinds, 29160's and 19160's.

(4) Is the proper driver listed for the AHA-2930U card in the SuSE hardware database really the aix7xxx or the is it aic7xxx_old?

They might both work but I am sure the old module would work. Your mileage may vary.

(5) Does SuSE 8.1 ship with the driver aic7xxx.o or just with aic7xxx_old.o? If the former is there, how do I find it in the installation media?

Not sure about 8.1 but I would believe that it does. 8.0 ships with the old but it is not used... you have to cause it to be used. Basically what you would need to do is to go into the /etc/sysconfig/kernel file and change the aix7xxx entry in that file to look like: INITRD_MODULES="aic7xxx_old" Then run mk_initrd to make a new /boot/initrd file. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 02/10/03 13:55 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "He keeps differentiating.... flying off on a tangent."