module.conf options

[P. Larry Nelson]

Well, I take it by the lack of response since my original post
last week that this problem is solved by neither a boot time
option nor a modules.conf option and that perhaps I am the
first to see this bug?

Any insights from the scsi code authors would be welcome.

To recap:
  - system boots and runs fine when attached to aic7902
  - system (as above) will not see 2nd disk attached to aic7892a
  - system will not boot if attached to aic7892a

It's as tho it's saying: "By golly, I was built on a fast
controller and I'm just not going to talk to anything slower!"

Thanks!
- Larry

P. Larry Nelson wrote:
> At least I think this is a module.conf options question.
> 
> I built a RedHat EL system (RHEL AS_3_U3) on a box that has
> an aic7902 Ultra320 internal scsi controller.  It also has
> an external aic7892a U160/m controller to which nothing was
> attached at build time.
> 
> So, now I attach an external Nexsan raid system to the external
> U160 controller and the system, upon reboot (and via kudzu,
> the new hardware discovering tool), sees the controller and
> asks if I want to configure it.  Well sure, sez I, and I click
> on the "configure" button and the kudzu GUI window "blips" and
> goes away and the system continues booting up normally.
> (As an aside, I will mention that this raid is already in use
> as /home on another system running RH9.0 on a different but
> identical aic7892a controller, so I know there's nothing wrong
> with it.)
> 
> After the system is up and running, I notice that the system
> does not see the newly attached raid, nor is there evidence
> in /var/log/messages that it saw the U160/m at bootup.  Most
> strange since kudzu says it saw it and I told it to configure it.
> Even stranger - when I fire up the hardware browser GUI, it
> shows the aic7892a U160/m under "SCSI Devices", but under "Hard
> Drives", it shows only the system disk and not the attached raid.
> 
> Since most of our systems have front removable bays for the disks,
> I decided to pull this AS_3_U3 system disk built on an ultra320
> controller and put it into a system with the slower U160/m controller
> and it won't boot.
> 
> So, my question is: is there a parameter I can place in
> /etc/modules.conf that will allow this system to boot on the
> slower controllers, but more importantly to the task at hand,
> allow it to see an attached disk on the external U160/m while
> booting on the Ultra320?  That is, is there some way to tell
> the system that even tho the kernel was built with the fast
> Ultra320 driver, that it's really ok to also accept a slower
> U160/m device?  For that matter, why won't the Ultra320 driver
> "talk down" to its slower compatriots?
> 
> I suspect that if I rebuild the system on the original Ultra320
> controller with a disk attached to the U160/m, it would load all
> the correct parameters or whatever, but I really would rather not
> have to do that if there's a simple workaround.
> 
> Or is this a boot time option rather than a modules.conf thing?
> 
> Thanks!
> - Larry 


-- 
P. Larry Nelson (217-244-9855) | Systems/Network Administrator
461 Loomis Lab                 | U of I, CITES Departmental Services
1110 W. Green St., Urbana, IL  | Consultant to: High Energy Physics Group
MailTo:lnelson at uiuc.edu        | http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/lnelson
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