2 SCSI-Controllers with linux?

[Doug Ledford]

Piete Brooks wrote:
> 
> > A very short question: "Is it possible to use two AHA2940 Controllers
> > with Linux or are there any known problems?"
> 
> A related question: If I have an AIC-7880 and an AHA-294X (one on the
> motherboard, the other on a PCI card), is there a way to select to *JUST* use
> one of them, and to ignore the other completely ?

Not without hacking the source code and recompiling.
 
> <BACKGROUND>
> RedHat 5.0, Linux 2.0.32, aic7xxx module, I'm a comparative SCSI newbie ....
> 
> Someone ordered a Dual PII/300 system using a R440LX Motherboard
> ( http://www.intel.com/design/servers/R440LX/ ) and a SCSI disk.
> 
> Something in the onboard controller would not do sufficient mappings to allow
> it to see 500 cylinders (as NT did) but over 4000 cylinders, so NT and Linux
> disagreed strongly on what was where, and the BIOS could only access 1/4 of
> the disk.

This sounds suspiciously(SP?) like the driver is unable to read a SEEPROM on
the onboard controller.  In that case, the boot param aic7xxx=extended
should have fixed the cylinder difference problem.  However, it probably
wouldn't have helped with the other problem that card has.  More below.
 
> The suppliers tried a second disc (IBM DCAS-34330W instead of the original
> DCAS-34330) but the same symptoms.

This shouldn't have made a difference.  The problem is in the controller not
the drive.

> I tried a AHA2920, and it sees 500 cylinders just fine (on the DCAS-34330W
> (but not the DCAS-34330 as I remember).
> 

You noted in your email that when you probe with the module, it "throws a
wobbly".  After looking at the logs, it seems to me this is another
indication that we aren't able to read the SEEPROM, and that the module in
use has a hard time picking out what termination settings to use in that
case.  You can try the aic7xxx-5.0.7 driver and see if it helps.  If you
don't want to go the full kernel install route, then you can grab the
RedHat-4.2 boot disk from my ftp site and boot up with that, load the
aic7xxx module from the boot disk and see what the results are.  If that
boot disk and module can successfully find and use both cards, then the
5.0.7 driver should solve your problems and get things going for you.  If
you try this, load the module with the "Specify options" parameter instead
of the "Autoprobe" parameter and give the module the following option:

aic7xxx='verbose:0xffff.extended'

and let me know what the module has to say about the SEEPROM on the built in
controller (you can see the module load output by switching to vt #4
<ALT-F4> after starting the module load).

The boot disk is at
ftp.dialnet.net:/pub/linux/aic7xxx/boot_disks/5.0.7/RedHat-4.2

-- 

 Doug Ledford  <dledford at dialnet.net>
  Opinions expressed are my own, but
     they should be everybody's.

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