[gentoo-dev] SCSI support in gentoo installation

[gentoo-dev] SCSI support in gentoo installation

[Peter Permentier]

Hi,

I've just now tried to download and install your gentoo distro.

Everything looks ok, and the online intall guide is pretty neat but for a
minor detail: It would seem the entire installation assumes a complete IDE
setup. My system is a 100%scsi system and i would like to report the
following problem(s) i ran into. Perhaps these may assist you in tweaking
the install scripts for the next release. When unpacking and running the
stage1 tarball (I've tried a bit later using the stage3 tarball, but had
same result) the scsi devices are detected during bootup, and all seems
fine, but the /dev dir has no block devices set up for scsi (or so it
seemed in my install)

 However, once i ran

#mknod /dev/sda b 8 0

followed by

#fdisk /dev/sda

all necessary block devices were created/added (for every disk, even though
I only added one) and mounting and installation could resume their normal
course.
I'm not too familiar with linux yet to know if this is a general issue or
if it was specific to this machine, and since that's the only machine i own
that's SCSI enabled i cannot make the test on a different build as of yet.

Also, I've noticed that once the installation complete, when i reboot, the
kernel loads the correct scsi module, but again doesn't find/create any
/dev/sd?? block devices, and consequently fails to mount the root
partition.

Could this be related?
Do you perhaps have a suggestion how i might alleviate this problem?

wfg,
Peter Permentier

P.S. FYI The system in question is a dual processor intel machine. The
disks are UW scsi3 connected to 2 Adaptec AH-29160 adapters (3 disks per
adapter).
Should you require more specific info, please do not hesitate to ask.

Re: [gentoo-dev] SCSI support in gentoo installation

[Colin Morey]

On Mon, 2002-05-06 at 07:18, Peter Permentier wrote:
> 
> Everything looks ok, and the online intall guide is pretty neat but for a
> minor detail: It would seem the entire installation assumes a complete IDE
> setup. My system is a 100%scsi system and i would like to report the
> following problem(s) i ran into. Perhaps these may assist you in tweaking
> the install scripts for the next release. When unpacking and running the
> stage1 tarball (I've tried a bit later using the stage3 tarball, but had
> same result) the scsi devices are detected during bootup, and all seems
> fine, but the /dev dir has no block devices set up for scsi (or so it
> seemed in my install)
> 
please see below :)
> I'm not too familiar with linux yet to know if this is a general issue or
> if it was specific to this machine, and since that's the only machine i own
> that's SCSI enabled i cannot make the test on a different build as of yet.
heh, not to worry, at least scsi is reasonable well spread, unlike other
hardware:)

> 
> Also, I've noticed that once the installation complete, when i reboot, the
> kernel loads the correct scsi module, but again doesn't find/create any
> /dev/sd?? block devices, and consequently fails to mount the root
> partition.
hmm, i'd advise making sure the scsi modules are compiled into the
kernel, not as modules, makes life a lot easier i've found.

> 
> Could this be related?
> Do you perhaps have a suggestion how i might alleviate this problem?
> 
> wfg,

eh?
> Peter Permentier
> 
> P.S. FYI The system in question is a dual processor intel machine. The
> disks are UW scsi3 connected to 2 Adaptec AH-29160 adapters (3 disks per
> adapter).
nice.

> Should you require more specific info, please do not hesitate to ask.
> 
o.k., in the cd installation documentation it says,
==============================================

Now, if you want to be able to access any SCSI hardware that wasn't detected
during the PCI autodetection process, you'll need to load the appropriate
modules from /lib/modules, again using modprobe:

Code listing 2

# modprobe aic7xxx
# modprobe sr_mod
# modprobe sd_mod

==============================================

Could you try this for me, and see if it works?

Cheers,
Colin Morey