Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2234 mails)

[rost0005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Alexander Stragies)]

needs help from the pro's. He wants to grow up to become a firewall,
gateway and websserver for my home network. unfortunalety he has a few
problems...

he has an old motherboard with no onboard floppy controller, but it
features an ancient adaptek 1742 scsi controller, which does have a floppy
controller... one problem is, they seem to be bust, or malfunctioning.

I thought, that scsi controllers have an own accessible bios, which may(?)
have some diagnosing features, but i dont know the standard hotkey to
access it.
then i tried a loadlin install, which wasnt't too successful... it just
stopped responding

my idea was, that i could just remove the whole scsi-subsys (2*236 mb hd,
and one cdrom +controller), put it into a computer with a functioning
floppy drive, boot up happily and complete stage 1 (getting a bootable
linux on it ), BUT suddenly the the dead-thought adaptek floppy controller
jumps back in and renders both the motherboard floppy controller and
itself useless by somehow "overiding" the motherboard floppy controller...
so that solution was in fact not a solution 
(the computer was my brothers cyrix without a working linux) 

this really got me nuts, so i took all the scsi devices and took them
along to saarbruecken, where i study. there in my room i have my main
machine, with a working linux on it. This machine also has a scsi
controller, an aha152x. THIS one works like a champ. My idea was to put
the drives onto the aha152x, install suse6.2  on them by ftp.

First problem was the lack of an appropriate bootdisk, the suse6.2/disks/
folder only contained two scsi kernel images: aha2xxx and buslogic  :(
kinda got around that by using the eide01 and modules disk, which featured
the aha152x as a module. i quickly installed the module eexpress for the
ftp connection, and install actually got on its way. The packets were
installed, and most of the other stuff was done. On the scsidisks i ended
up with:

da1  /mnt/win #the old win95, which used to be on the disks#
sda2  /boot/ #8 megabytes#
sdb1  / #186 megs#
sdb2  swap #45 meg#
(and a nonfunctioning boot-disk... see below)

A thought that had arrisen during the packet download and install, was
that the kernel i was using for installation would not boot my 486, since
aha152x was only in as a module. So eventually i would have to compile a
custom kernel for my 486. Ok, no big deal, but i was having severe space
problems. Having the sources for 2.2.10 with my other suse install on
hda2, i thought, i could use that system to compile a custom scsikernel
for the scsidisks. i did just that and copied it to the 8 meg boot
partition on sda2. i did notice the boot.b and map file. If these files
contain values or parameters connected to the machine the install was done
on (like "cpu-type: PII, or the like), i'd be messed, since these values
are likely to be different on the onld 486...

Anyway, during the install i answered no to the question, whether i wanted
to install lilo. i know, that i'll eventually need it, when the
"emergency" OS on sda1 has ceased to exist, but back then i was scared
that it might wreck the already existing lilo-MBR on hda. i was not sure,
whether lilo would install in hda or sda (=where i would need it), even if
the install had /boot on sda2 and "/" on sdb1... , but i did make a
bootdisk during the install
After that i rebooted, and noticed ,that the bottdisk made during the
installation did not have aha152x compiled in... so i was locked out my
brand new install  :( 

My next try was to make an entry in my hda lilo, that was supposed to call
the (custom)kernel, that i had placed in /dev/sda2 (boot partition) in the
/boot folder:

image = /boot/486kern
root = /dev/sda2
label = 486 ^^^^

((
The following entry is my working linux on the other drive:
image = /boot/sept
root  =  /dev/hda2
label = sept  ^^^^
))

this worked as far as "booting linux" (first two lines after lilo) and
then froze... the funny thing made noise, and since the case was open i
could see all the hd leds, i saw, that hda was working on something and
the two scsi drives shortly lit up one after the other... Anyway, it did
not work, so my next try was to make write a lilo.conf for the scsidisks
and try to tell lilo, that it should write it not to hda2 but to sda2. A
quick lilo --help gave me what sounds like an answer: lilo -b boot-device.
that went down without a prob. i then disconnected my "main" drive hda, to
try and force the computer to boot from the scsi adapter. this did not
work. the computer gave me some kind of message like "boot failed". 
I figure i have to change some scsi bios parameters like "make
disk ID x bootable" or in the like. BUT, how do i acces the scsibios? i
have 2 cards, for both i appreciate every hint, tip or trick:

1.adaptek aha152x, which is in my working linux pc, but what key to access
the scsibios?
2.adaptek aha1742, every info is appreciated...(dig up some old memories,
please :) )

oh, and if somebody knows about the jumper settings for these, please?
something else intriguing is "error 0x001" from lilo, which i only saw
once, and cannot replicate?

So, as far as i can see, i have three possibilities:
1. try and make a working bootdisk for the scsidisk-installation with the
working system on hda2 and a custom built kernel, (note: is there anything
else to select in the kernel konf apart from the scsi-drivers (no
modules). i remember seeing something like "boot offboard chipsets first"
in some other kernel konf some time ago, i think.) what do i have to do?,
i cannot run the new kernel, because destination machine is not equal to
source machine... (note2: what exactly boot.b and map do, and how could i
replicate them?) 
2. go to windows(old install on scsi-disk) and try and mess with loadlin,
until i get it to work with lilo.
3. follow an alternate route as suggested by the experienced.

if you've taken the time to read until here, please have the time to send
me ANY hint, correction, anything that might help or be interesting. I can
also be more precise, if that is needed. :)

when i'm finished, i would like to have the following:

266 desktop			486 webserver,firewall
(working +-fine since d 0)	has old wininstall and nonbootable linux
eide: hda			on: eide: 0
scsi: aha152x			and scsi: 2 x 236
  scd				no floppydrive.

well, thanks already...

alex _smkd_


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