Hi Folks,

I've got two SCSI controllers in my box. One is working great, the other one doesn't seem to get its driver loaded (and I haven't figured out where to specify that it should load or whatever).

The RAID controller is built into the MB and there's a "zero-channel" card that enables the RAID capability. The other card is just in a PCI slot and it's got a tape drive hooked to it that I'm trying to get to work.... Since the OS doesn't seem to see the card, I assumed I'd need to start there. (If anyone knows a way to get the tape working with a single step, I take it!)

Here's the output of /sbin/lspci for the cards in question:

02:03.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec ASC-29320LP U320 (rev 03)
02:05.0 RAID bus controller: Adaptec (formerly DPT) SmartRAID V Controller (rev 01)

The driver for the RAID controller (I20) loads up and the drives are all happy and usable. The other adaptec presumably needs the aic79xx driver, but it doesn't seem to load.

The tape drive is a Certance LTO drive and I do not seem to have anything in /dev that corresponds to it.

Distro is Red Hat Enterprise 3.0
Kernel 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp

dmesg | grep scsi returns this (nothing about the 29320 card):

dmesg | grep scsi
scsi0 : Vendor: Adaptec Model: 2015S FW:3B0A
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdb at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdc at scsi0, channel 0, id 2, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdd at scsi0, channel 1, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sde at scsi0, channel 1, id 1, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdf at scsi0, channel 1, id 2, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdg at scsi0, channel 1, id 3, lun 0
hdd: attached ide-scsi driver.
scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Attached scsi generic sg3 at scsi0, channel 0, id 8, lun 0, type 3

The tape drive is SCSI ID 6 on the 29320 card.

Here's some things I'm thinking would be required, but I'm too much of a noobie to know where to make the mods:

Load the aic79xx driver for the 29380 card.

Load the tape drive's driver (not sure at this point if there is one--their Linux instructions seem to assume that Linux will see the tape drive and you'll be good to go [/dev/st0 or /dev/nst0 or whatever]).

Any suggestions gratefully accepted!

Thanks,

John

Best bet is to re-compile your kernel with the aic79xx driver and scsi tape drivers. First you may want to try modprobe aic79xx and then modprobe st, you may already have the modules installed.




Mike

Mike,

Thanks for the suggestion.... But I'm not sure how to go about doing a "recompile" of the kernel and adding the drivers--I don't actually have a driver for the tape drive so that's not going to do much anyway. But I guess I'm confused about this whole business: why would simply adding a driver require recompiling the kernel?

John

Well like I said, first check to see if you already have the drivers. As root type:
and then:
If both of those go through without any errors you are all set, you will just have to set it up so they get loaded every time you reboot.

If you don't have the drivers PM me and I will give you very simple directions on how to re-compile your kernel. It is very simple, the hardest part is choosing what you want to have in the kernel....and even that is easy.



Mike

Hi Mike,

Thanks for hanging in there with me. The aic79xx driver is available to load (via modprobe). I don't seem to need the st (scsi tape?) driver....

I found this moderately helpful article on the RH KnowledgeBase:

http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/dml_fetc...rise%2520Linux

One of the problems for us newbies is that "you just have to set it up so they get loaded every time you reboot" is a rather mysterious process. It seems like there's a jillion different places to put stuff that's supposed to happen during boot-up and there's no obvious way to find the right one. (Clearly I need a better conceptual foundation, but it is also just plain extremely complex, it seems.)

I changed /etc/modules.conf as per the RH article, but the aic79xx driver still didn't seem to load. That is, after changin the modules.conf file and rebooting, lsmod didn't list the aic79xx driver until I did the modprobe manually. After doing that, the driver appears in the lsmod list and the Gnome "Hardware Browser" (can anyone help me out with the console/non-GUI version of that tool?) shows both the SCSI card and the tape drive itself. Not only that, but the tape drive software can see the drive (this is a first!).

So, I'm getting there. It does appear that I need to find another spot to put the modprobe command as it doesn't seem to actually do anything differently whether or not its in modules.conf--unless I somehow corrupted the file. At any rate, it looks like I need to find another script to add the modprobe command to.

John

Worst case scenario, there is a catch-all file for getting things to start on boot, when you aren't sure how else to do it:

edit:
/etc/rc.d/rc.local

and add your line:
modprobe aic79xx

to the bottom of the file.

Once you figure out where the 'proper' place is to get this module to load, you can remark out that line with a # at the beginning.