I've tried to boot mandrake 9.2, mandrake 10.0, suse 9.0 pro
The comp don't detect a CD in the drive.(a toshiba SCSI cd rom on a HP NetServer LD Pro)(the scsi cd rom is on a Adaptec AIC-7880U SCSI Controller)
I tried to burn boot.iso to make a boot CD but the same problem appear

sorry for my english

Is the machine's BIOS set-up to boot off
the SCSI-CD's? Or the controller itself?


Me too, specifically for the swearing in your
signature. Can you please remove that?


Cheers,
Tink

The server use Phoenix Bios... or something like that... But there's no "Bios Windows" by pressing delete button, the only thing I can access is a HP Diagnostic Assistant.

But a Windows CD boot.

A Mandrake Linux 10.0 Cd boot with a floppy disk made with rawwrite.
But here another problem... Mandrake asks me for Adaptec AIC-7880 Controller Drivers on a floppy disk and I don't find them.

A SuSE 9.0 CD don't boot at all.

Mandrake 9.2 : only the second cd boot but, same drivers problem.

So for my server, which is better SuSE or Mandrake and how boot and/or find drivers.

If we can call that a server... old s***

I'm not familiar enough with either of those two
to tell you how to go ahead ... if the MDK 9.2
CD1 doesn't boot it's probably a coaster ...

Really I'd think both should be quite suitable
for an elderly server model, and the AIC78
series have been supported by the linux kernel
for a good while now.

If this were a slackware boot CD I'd enter scsi.s
on the prompt and be done :)


Cheers,
Tink

I followed your tip of trying slackware with the scsi.s prompt

The CD boot, it works well, until I need to partition my disk

I tried # cfdisk /dev/sda1 , sda is my Seagate 4.2 gb HD
I was not sure sda was the good one so I tried sdb too.
Alway the same problem : UNABLE TO OPEN ... Press another key...

I also tried with fdisk but it say : Unable to open...

So the problem is that I can't accede to my hd... how I can !???


another time, sorry for my english

thx to take time to help me.

Are you positive that the SCSI bus is
terminated properly? This starting to look
more an more like a hardware problem to
me... What's the physical layout of the
devices on your SCSI-chains?


Cheers,
Tink

I don't really think that's a hardware problem, I installed Windows 2003 Server on it and it works well. But... using windows for a server... I prefer Linux....

So if it was a hardware problem, I couldn't install server 2003... true?

Hmmm ... if 2003 installs fine, but you can't fdisk it?


Do you have knoppix at hand? I'd just like to know
the exact model of the controller as by lspci, and am
not sure that the busybox you get on boot in Slack
will allow you to run that ...


Cheers,
Tink

I have a Knoppix CD, and I already tried Knoppix.

When I run it at a live CD it go well but when I install it, it mnt all my disk!!! and I can't umount them...