Hello. I am a Linux neophyte.

I have a hefty external SCSI drive (1TB) that I wish to connect to a Linux box running SUSE 10.3. I am using an Adaptec 29160 card for the connection. This card is recognized, as shown in the relevant clip from lspci:

03:00.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7892A U160/m (rev 02)

The first few lines of /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/7 are:

Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 7.0
Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 SCSI adapter
aic7892: Ultra160 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs
Allocated SCBs: 4, SG List Length: 128

OK, but now I am stumped. What is the device name for the external SCSI drive, and how do I thus mount?

I'll appreciate any help. Thank you in advance.

If you type the command as root ' /sbin/fdisk -l ' you can see drives the system has and partitions with their device block IDs.

Then ou use the mount command. Type ' man mount ' to learn the many options the basics for say a vfat partition on say /deb/sdb and first partition /dev/sdb1. You also will need a directory to mount to as well like /mnt/sdb1.
mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

For say an ext2 partition.
mount -t ext2 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

Brian

Device names for SCSI drives go /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc etc... for drives 1, 2, 3 etc... respectively.

Typically you mount partitions of a drive. The drive partitions are numbers appended to the name e.g. /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3 would be 3 partitions on the first drive whereas /dev/sdc1 and /dev/sdc2 would be 2 partitions on the third drive.

There are many tools for partitioning drives. The most common available is "fdisk". Typing "fdisk -l" should show you all drives and the partitions they have. Doing "fdisk /dev/sdb" would put you into a screen to modify partitions on the second drive.

In Linux you can format a partition by putting a filesystem on it then mount that that. The mkfs command is used for doing the filesystem creation.

Alternatively you could create a meta disk (software RAID) out of multiple disks or partitions or a Logical Volume Manager (LVM) volume group (VG) to make what appears to be one large volume (logical disk) that can split into logical volumes (LVs) which are like logical partitions of the logical disk.

You can get more information on most Linux commands by typing:
"man <command>"
-OR-
"info <command>".
Usually info will give you what man would as well as any additional information if someone wrote an info page for it. (Most commands have man - not all have info.)

Hi again - Thanks both to Brian and to JLightner. So, I guess I forgot to mention that -- though the scsi controller is recognized -- it doesn't appear that it actually recognizes the disk! So, when I do something like "fdisk -l", I learn about /dev/sda, which is for the first internal seagate scsi drive, and /dev/sdb, which is for the second internal seagate scsi drive. I would assume, then, that /dev/sdc would be for the scsi drive I've connected to the adaptec card, but... Also, on boot, though again it recognizes the card it doesn't recognize the drive. I know I'm likely missing something very, very fundamental, but what is it? Again, I appreciate your help. -Erin

Does the controller recognize the drive during the controller's boot scan (If so enabled)? If not then it probably is a hardware issue.
The drive must be powered on prior to booting the computer.
The drives bus terminator switch should enabled if it is the only external device or the last in the chain?
All of the drives both internal and external must have a unique ID 0-15 not including 7 which is the default controller ID number.

How many drives are actually connected to the SCSI controller? It sounds like only one?

Hi - So, it turns out that the cable wasn't working properly. Having scrounged a new one from our "stuff" room, I can now see the drive. I guess I'm off to the races. Thanks for all the hand-holding. -Erin

Sounded like a termination issue or wrong cable for the type of scsi interface. Scsi can be a pain with mix modes and stuff.

Brian