AIC 78928 on compaq AP550

[Doug Ledford]

Paul Davis wrote:
> 
> I have a Compaq AP550 with an aic 78928 scsi controller.  I was
> able to install RH 6.0, but couldn't get the system to boot from
> the SCSI drive.  I had to copy initrd.img to /boot/ and point
> lilo at that to get the system to boot off the SCSI drive.
> 
> I was able to get the upgrade to RH 6.2 to run only by using a
> device driver diskette from the image on the website, but the
> resulting system wouldn't boot from the SCSI drive *or* from the
> 6.2 boot diskette created by the upgrade.  I could only boot the
> 6.2 system by using the 6.0 boot diskette.  The trick of moving
> initrd.img to /boot didn't work due to kernel incompatibilities.
> 
> With the driver from 6.0 I see:
>   "Downloading sequencer code... 374 instructions downloaded
>     .
>     .
>     .
>   <4>(scsi0:0:0:0) Parity error during Message-Out phase.
>   <4>scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 0, scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
>    Test Unit Ready 00 00 00 00 00
>   <4>SCSI host 0 abort (pid 0) timed out - resetting
>   <4>SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0.
>   <4>SCSI host 0 channel 0 reset (pid 0) timed out - trying harder
>   <4>SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0.
>   <6>(scsi0:0:0:0) Synchronous at 80.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 127.
> 
> I don't remember the exact number, but the new driver downloads
> more than 374 instructions.  I see the same parity error, but
> then an endless retry -- i.e. I never see "trying harder" and
> never break out of the loop.
> 
> Looks like both drivers get the same error, but the one from the
> RH 6.0 install "tries harder" and manages to use the drive where
> the new driver loops endlessly.
> 
> And I thought that by using the dd option, the upgrade would
> automatically install the new driver, but this seems not to have
> been the case.  Bottom line is that I can't get the 6.2 install
> to boot from the SCSI -- not no way, not no how.
> Any ideas?

Do a 6.2 install using the driver update disk.  The problem you had is a bug
in the install code where the install code doesn't automatically copy the new
driver onto the hard disk image before making the initrd image.  So, after
package installation is complete, you will have to copy the the new driver out
of the file in the /tmp/dd.whatever directory (which may be module archives,
so be prepared to have to do things like zcat the file through cpio to get the
module out), then re-run the mkinitrd program to generate a new initrd image,
put that in place (in /mnt/sysimage/boot/initrd-2.2.14-whatever.img) and then
rerun lilo (/mnt/sysimage/sbin/lilo -r /mnt/sysimage).  That should make it
work.


> p.s.  This isn't critical.  There are several other intractable
> driver problems so I'll probably have to abandon this machine
> anyway.  In particular, I can't seem to get the driver for
> the Intel 82559 Fast Ethernet card to build with the new (RH
> 6.2) kernel.  I was able to build the new NIC driver on the
> 6.0 system (the card would periodically hang with the original
> driver).  I've tried loading a new driver for the sound-card, but
> all attempts to use the sound-card still report device busy or
> unavailable with both RH 6.0 and 6.2.
> 
> p.p.s. Had an inordinate amount of trouble getting the driver
> off the web site.  Netscape 4.7 never did manage, but Netscape
> 4.51 did.  Is there an ftp alternative?

Use a Shift-Click procedure when clicking on the file name, then Netscape
won't try to decompress the file on the fly (without removing the .gz ending I
might add, consider this a Netscape stupidism).

-- 

 Doug Ledford <dledford at redhat.com>  http://people.redhat.com/dledford
      Please check my web site for aic7xxx updates/answers before
                      e-mailing me about problems


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