David - Thanks for your detailed reply. I think it may actually be beyond my ability to under in places, but let me try. David Benfell wrote:
David,
I'm unemployed at the moment, so I actually have time to look a little in depth at your problem. But in general, you should reply to the list.
I hope the unemployment is by choice, i.e., yours.
From what I can see, your first main problem is with your SCSI card. You might have other problems, but this is the one we've gotta kill first. What kind of a SCSI adapter do you have? The kernel seems to identify it as an Adaptec AHA-294x. SuSE attempts to load the aic7xxx for it. That isn't working.
The card is an Adeptec 2940U2/W, its working fine under winders, and both CD-ROMs, both hard drives, and the Nikon film scanner are attached. All these devices are performing flawlessly as far as I can tell. (The 18 gig HD is reserved for Linux so that one I can't truthfully comment on as of yet.)
This could be one of three things:
1) The card might be defective. I'm betting this isn't the case.
No, as mentioned above, it apears to be working flawlessly.
2) SuSE might not load this driver by default in the installation image. It sees that it needs this driver, but it needs the driver to read the installation media. Since it doesn't have the driver to read the CD-ROM, it can't load the driver that it knows it needs. This is what I think the problem is.
I believe you are correct in that my read on all this is that the install isn't actually able to "use" the controller, and as ALL my ctitical devices (HDs and CD-ROMs) are controlled by the 2940U2/W, I'm dead in the water at that point.
3) The card might be misidentified. Make sure the identification above is correct. But I'm guessing that #2 is more likely.
No, the card identy is correct in as far as it goes, i.e., it is more than just a 294x, it is a U2/W which puts it is the SCSI III category, the super wide and FASt SCSI class.
If either #2 or #3 is the problem, you need to load the driver before beginning the installation.
This is where you begin to loose me. How does one install a driver to a basically non-existent system? I'm very new to this as you can ascertain.
As I recall, after booting from the installation medium, it pops up a plain text menu (using curses or something like it) that allows you to choose from about four options. One of those is to proceed with the installation and another is to load drivers. This is the point to take action.
In my experiences with attempting to load 7.1 on this box, my installs stop as I identified yesterday (below) - or - , if I start the install with the floppy in the drive and select "manual" as an argument for the linux load, I can get to the point in the install where the screen asks forme to put the modules diskette into the drive which then takes me toa modules screen where most of the optons DON't work and I have to power down to get out of the install. However, I can select a SCSI option which then asks me for the parameters for the "aic7xxx" device but at this point I'm totally STUPID. I haven't the foggiest as to what should be input for parameters and, with respect to what you've described up to this point, I don't understand how one would load the appropriate, even if I knew what it was, at this point in the install. ;-(
Pick the option to load drivers. Follow the series of menus down to where you can load the aic7xxx driver (look under SCSI). Oh, um, by the way, I'm assuming here that #3 isn't the problem and the card is correctly identified. If it isn't correctly identified, then you need to find the correct driver and choose that instead.
Now you can proceed with the installation.
The default screen stops writing to the screen with the line "Starting hardware detection . . ." then moves the cursor to the left hand edge of the screen one line down and just sits there blinking.
Okay, so you correctly deduced that there might be a problem with the hardware detection.
Pressing <ctrl> <alt> F3 shows the following "Going to load module 'aic7xxx' to activate it, executing: >>insmod aic7xxx" and then the cursor moves to the next line, far left edge, blinking.
Whoops. This is why I suspect it's a SCSI problem.
Pressing <ctrl> <alt> F4 provides a fair bit of info but I think this is critical stuff:
"usb hub found 2 ports detected .
Well, that part is certainly okay.
. . . (scsi0)) <Adaptec AHA-294x Ultra SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 0/10/0
Well, looky here. There are developments regarding this driver, but it seems like it should have worked for you, since the installation uses a 2.2 kernel and the new driver which might not support your card doesn't appear until the 2.4 kernels. (More below.) This assumes, however, that it's correctly identifying your card.
(scsi0) Wide channel, scsi, IO=7 32,255 SCBs (scsi0) Downloading sequencer code . . . 392 instructions downloaded scsi0 Adaptec AHA-274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.31/3.2.4 (Adaptec AHA-294x Ultra2 scsi host adapter) scsi : 1 host (scsi0:4:0) Synchronous at 20.0 Mbytes/sec, offset 8 scsi: aborting command due to timeout: pid 4, scsi0, channel 0, ID 4, lun 0 test unit ready 00 00 00 00 00" Then this piece of information is rewritten about every 30 seconds or so and goes on and on and on until I kill the system. Using the <ctrl> <alt> <f keys> route will take me back to exactly where the other screen stopped with the blinking cursors so they go no further but this screen continues to update.
Ick. This indeed is where the problem is. Whatever else might be going on with your system, the thing we gotta fix first is your SCSI issue.
I'm not there; I can't look at your system and see what you've actually got. But the Linux Hardware Database at http://lhd.datapower.com/ might be your friend. See http://lhd.datapower.com/db/searchproduct.cgi?name=Adaptec+AHA-294
I looked through the various reviews. It seems like there are a lot of very happy, enthusiastic, Linux users with Adaptec cards.
Yeah, but just not me so far. ;-)
But perhaps you've got the AHA-2944UW as described at http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?1888 This has no reviews yet. It should use the same driver as the others.
No, not the case; its definately a 2940U2/W
Looking around with a Google search, it looks like this card is working on a great many Linux systems.
So. Make sure you've actually got an Adaptec AHA-294x card. Is this a known-to-be-working card?
Yup!
I was also able to glean this info after pressing <ctrl> <alt> F3
auto2_init : 547 Hardware probing finished auto2_init : 628 valid_net_config_ig = 0 auto2_find_install_medium : 670 Looking for SuSE auto2_find_install_medium : 681 OK, that didn't work; see if we can activate another storage device Found a "?" Going to load module "aic7xxx" to activate it . . .
Something's definitely up here. Is your CD-ROM also on this SCSI controller?
Yup, both of them, most definately.
By the way, assuming your card was correctly identified, it looks like there's a new driver in Linux 2.4 for many cards which use the aic7xxx driver. But the 294x isn't listed there. Instead...
Old Adaptec AIC7xxx chipset SCSI controller support CONFIG_SCSI_AIC7XXX_OLD WARNING This driver is an older aic7xxx driver and is no longer under active development. Adaptec, Inc. is writing a new driver to take the place of this one, and it is recommended that whenever possible, people should use the new Adaptec written driver instead of this one. This driver will eventually be phased out entirely.
This is support for the various aic7xxx based Adaptec SCSI controllers. These include the 274x EISA cards; 284x VLB cards; 2902, 2910, 293x, 294x, 394x, 3985 and several other PCI and motherboard based SCSI controllers from Adaptec. It does not support the AAA-13x RAID controllers from Adaptec, nor will it likely ever support them. It does not support the 2920 cards from Adaptec that use the Future Domain SCSI controller chip. For those cards, you need the "Future Domain 16xx SCSI support" driver.
In general, if the controller is based on an Adaptec SCSI controller chip from the aic777x series or the aic78xx series, this driver should work. The only exception is the 7810 which is specifically not supported (that's the RAID controller chip on the AAA-13x cards).
Note that the AHA2920 SCSI host adapter is *not* supported by this driver; choose "Future Domain 16xx SCSI support" instead if you have one of those.
Information on the configuration options for this controller can be found by checking the help file for each of the available configuration options. You should read drivers/scsi/aic7xxx_old/README.aic7xxx at a minimum before contacting the maintainer with any questions. The SCSI-HOWTO, available from http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html#howto , can also be of great help.
If you want to compile this driver as a module ( = code which can be inserted in and removed from the running kernel whenever you want), say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The module will be called aic7xxx_old.o.
So when you go to a 2.4 kernel, you may need the old driver.
Executing >> insmod aic7xxx << Using /modules/aic7xxx.0 _ (cursor in LLH corner sitting there blinking)
I had CD 1 in the tray and after boot began inserted the boot floppy in its drive. Without placing the flopy in the drive it doesn't find whatever it finds as "?" as noted 7 lines above. Watching the drive lights the install does read from the floppy if its in the drive.
Thinking that the problem could be video related
Sad to say, at this point in the discussion I'm totally lost. I know I need to review the materials below you've taken the time to direct me to, but I'm not sure how to use that info. Assuming the problem is neither video related, nor related to my Soundblaster Live sound card which I realize now that I forgot to mention, I'm not sure where those materials fit into the SCSI card problem. So, at this point I guess I'm still in futher need of how to tackle the SCSI stuff before I can move ahead. And, as suggested, I'm copying this response to the list. Thanks again, dave
We don't have any evidence of this yet, at least from what you've shown me, but...
(I'm currently running a Diamond FIRE GL 1000 Pro card with 40 MEG RAM)
I'm not familiar with this particular card; however, I see http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?25 and http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?1709 It looks like you should be able to get it working. SuSE has made many contributions in the area of video drivers, so this is a place where you actually have a better chance with SuSE than other distributions.
I picked up two video cards today and downloaded the drivers off the web to try the install with either one (a Diamond card with an sis6326 chip and an ATI RAGE 128 card) to see if its a video related problem as opposed to the controller card. I won't get around to doing that for a day or two however.
SuSE shouldn't have any trouble sith the SiS6326. SuSE helped develop the driver for it. The ATI Rage 128 is an old, well-known card. This should also work without difficulty. You shouldn't need to download drivers off the web for either of these; they should be included with XFree86 4.0.2. As of SuSE 7.0, only the SVGA driver was installed by default. If you need another driver, be sure to select it through individual package selection.
The SiS6326 was a troublesome card until recently, but see http://www.xfree86.org/4.0.2/Status30.html#30
For the ATI Rage 128, see http://www.xfree86.org/4.0.2/Status6.html#6
"But just throwing a list of hardware at people with no specific description of the problem just won't do."
I totally agree, of course, that such wouldn't do and I certainly didn't do that. What I did do, after having described the problem and being asked to supply a list of all my hardware, was to provide all the information requested + the driver info stuff to make it easier to answer any technical questions that the requested hardware list might have generated. Then, as I continued trying to isolate the problem, provided daily updates, including all the info I listed above.
Good. And you've provided a lot of good information here. It really does give me a basis for looking at your problem, even though my experience with SCSI is limited.
Hope this information helps some. Thanks for your interest,
Good luck with it.
-- David Benfell benfell@parts-unknown.org --- Resume available at http://www.parts-unknown.org/resume.html
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