Hey there...

I am having difficulties with a new tape drive. The OS does not see the new hardware at start up and any attempt to work with the drive always fails as the system is convinced that there is no /dev/st0

This is my first time installing external SCSI hardware on linux, so I am sure I am missing something. If the OS doesn't detect it, what should I do to force the installation?

the specifics:

Linux RedHat WS 2.1
Kernel 2.4.9-e.12
drive is: HP StorageWorks DAT 72 (external)
SCSI id of drive is 3 (according to product recommendations, no conflict apparent)

Any suggestions to move me forawrd would e greatly appreciated

Dave

You need to make sure the driver for the SCSI card is loaded. If the driver is not loaded then the tape drive will never show up.

Once the module loads for the scsi adapter, the tape drive is usually picked up automatically.

What type of scsi card do you have?

Is it terminated? SCSI usually needs 2 terminators, one will most likely be on the SCSI card itself and the other will have to be after the last device. Sometimes this is an external terminator that plugs into the last SCSI device and sometimes devices have termination built in and just need a jumper to be set to turn it on.

Is there anything useful in system logs (dmesg, tail /var/log/messages, etc maybe | grep scsi)

Does it show up in the SCSI controller's bootup message during POST?

Does it show up in cat /proc/scsi/scsi or any other place in the /proc/scsi dir?

Does it have a module that is loading? lsmod | grep scsi Which it wouldn't show up if the SCSI drivers are built into the kernel and not modularized.

Hmm that's all I can think of right now, hope you get it working.

Futhermore, the SCSI tape module is called st. Make sure it is loading as well as the SCSI controller module.

Hey there...

thanks for all your replies. Update of the situation: The HostRAID option was enabled. so we disabled that and suddenly the OS could see the controller. From the SCSI BIOS, I can see the tape drive as id 3.

from the OS, in the /proc/scsi folder is a file for the first controller which shows the two hdds and the processor. In this directory is a directory named for the controller and has two files in it (0 & 1). from these files I could determine that this is all geared toward the first controller

Adapter Configuration:
SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AIC-7899 Ultra 160/m SCSI host adapter
Ultra-160/m LVD/SE Wide Controller Channel B at PCI 1
/3/1


so, now that the OS found new hardware for the second controller and added drivers, shouldn't there be adirectory in /proc/scsi for the adaptec 2932a controller?

the scsi module IS installed, but there is no st module.

Thanks again,
Dave

should mention... this is a netfinity 4500r, dual ~866, 700+MB RAM (ecc of course)

thanks

ok...

finally located the st module:

[root@suntechnic root]# insmod st
Using /lib/modules/2.4.9-e.12smp/kernel/drivers/scsi/st.o


so i guess it is statically linked and not a seperate module... but that means the tape drivers are in place. So what I appear to be left with is a situation where the OS sees the controller at boot time, but not once the OS is up and running.

Is there a driver issue I might be missing?

Dave

thought I'd bump this once. I'm still lost and I'm hoping someone has some advice


Dave

OK....you're starting to confuse yourself (and me)!!

# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: IBM-ESXS Model: ST318305LW !# Rev: B244
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
Vendor: IBM-PSG Model: ST318436LW !# Rev: 3281
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 04 Lun: 00
Vendor: IBM Model: DDYS-T18350N Rev: SA2A
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03

The above is from my IBM server which has a single-channel 7899 adaptec built in to the system board...ther won't be a seperate directory for the 29320....any components attached to it will be listed in the above output...I have no tape drive currently hooked up to mine...all of the above devices are hard disks.


The Netfinity 4500R has a dual-channel scsi card built in to the motherboard....your disks, from what I gather, are attached to channel B. Rather than wrangle with 29320 raid adapter (which you shouldn't be attaching a tape drive to anyway), why don't you just attach the tape drive to the onboard channel A of the server's scsi adapter? There's already a driver available (aic7xxx...you can see it via lsmod) and you know that scsi card works without any special configuration.

Try plugging the tape drive into the other scsi channel on the motherboard (that is, if it's not being used). Since you haven't mentioned anything about the second scsi channel being used for anything I'm assuming that's the case. Shut off the server, plug the tape drive into the other scsi channel, fire up the server and then run cat /proc/scsi/scsi...that might help.

OR

If you want to use the adaptec PCI SCSI card, try running this command to load the driver for it:

modprobe aic79xx

Then run cat /proc/scsi/scsi.

If you see the tape drive then you can run a command like this to test it's status:

mt -f /dev/st0 status

If that works, then set the system up so the driver for the scsi card loads at every bootup:

1) Open /etc/modules.conf in your preferred text editor

2) Add a line like this:

alias scsi_hostadapter1 aic79xx

3) Save modules.conf

4) Make a new initrd image:

mkinitrd -f -v /boot/initrd-2.4.9-e.12.img 2.4.9-e.12

if you have an SMP kernel run:

mkinitrd -f -v /boot/initrd-2.4.9-e.12smp.img 2.4.9-e.12smp

5) Reboot

OR

You can simply add the following line to the /etc/rc.local file:

/sbin/modprobe aic79xx

Hope that helps

hkb33...

thanks so much for the assistance. It appears that you were on the right track. You are correct, the netfinity does have two internal scsi controllers, and these are identified by the OS with the hdd's on scsi0 and no devices on scsi1. I can see all this by doing : dmesg | grep scsi

Ok, obviously I am new to scsi. I did some research and talked to those suppossedly more knowledgable than myself and was told the 29320 was an LHV scsi controller. The tape drive is an external device and the built in scsi controllers have no external connectors (thus the need for the extra card, or so I thought).

I ran the command you specified: modprobe aic79xx

and this looked promising as the tape drive was accessed by the OS as soon as I hit return, but then I am faced with a kernel panic. At this point the OS is locked and I have to recycle the power.

This is getting frustrating as I am trying to get amanda in place and really dont want to resort to a win solution which is whats going to happen if I dont get results soon.

Thanks for all your help

Dave

kernel panic message:

Critical Section
Interupt Handler, Loop Not Synching

// forgot to post that before... thanks

Dave

Hello Verbal,
I had a very similar problem. I believe you are experiencing a driver problem with the old redhat AIC7xxx SCSI driver. Try getting an updated driver RPM from Adaptec. I had the exact same kernel panic, and upon downloading and installing the RPM, I am able to access my tape drive.

[root@keizan aic79xx]# mt -f /dev/st0 status
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x0 (default).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (50000):
DR_OPEN IM_REP_EN


--gabe

Hi there...

Just wanted to follow up on this.

Gabe, you were right, the problem lay in the driver. Unfortunately, the new driver doesn't work with the kernel that enterprise red hat ships with. Tested this by installing red hat 9. Once I did this AND updated the driver, then everything works perfectly. I suppose if I want to stick with the enterprise line, I'll have to upgrade the kernel in it.

You also have to get creative with the installation process, go into each of the scsi bios' and turn "on" the raid controller for the OS install, then right before installing the driver go back and turn them all off. Any deviation on this part resulted in an inability to boot.

Thanks to everyone that helped with this issue, I learned a lot about red hats scsi systems by going through all the motions.

Dave

Hello|||
I am new in RH Linus, now facing same problem with my SCSI card

Hi,

Any one help out the problem is slightly similar, I have to scasi tape drive on linux4 ES version, the problem is one tape drive is detected and other one is not detected in array, pls suggest on above problem.