Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3785 mails)

[Kastus <NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 01:21:35AM +0200, Patriiiiiiiiiick wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I have an Adaptec Utra160 SCSI card and the system freezes when it loads 
> the aic7xxx module (both old and new versions). The issue is described 
> in the following threads:
> 
> 	http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2002-Oct/3179.html
> 	http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2002-Oct/3600.html
> 	http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2003-Apr/1942.html (the 
> 	one I reycled to write this mail)

It looks like a known issue. According to the posts you refer to
it happens on a dual CPU system, right?

So this is what happens.

You are booting a non-SMP kernel which does not properly initialize
APIC (interrupt controller) which, in its turn, make SCSI controller
hang during driver initialization.

> 
> Possible personal solutions to be able to use the system:
> - compile my own kernel (not wished because I am not expert)
> - remove the aic7xxx module from the kernel system config and run 
> mkinitrd and start the module manually (modprobe) (not wished either 
> because only root can do it)

Possible solutions (which work for me) are:

1) use SMP kernel

2) if you have to use non-SMP kernel, pass "apic" parameter to the
kernel. (on a boot: prompt type "linux apic" without quotes, of course)

Regards, -Kastus