alright i realized that with a scsi controller i would obviously need to used one of the scsi kernels......but they didnt work, and then i read the boot messages and realized taht the hardware was using an adaptec scsi controller so i uses the adaptec.s kernel, but still am gettting error messages!! it appears that it is recognizing channel A and then when it tries to initialize channel B it says taht the command has already been initialized....i am lost, the computer is a SGI 1200 server model, and it has 4 bays for drivves, but only two bays have drives.....i know that no one on here is probably familar with this, but could it possibly have somethign to do wiith a raid controller, or the fact that only the A channel has drives, and that the B channel needs at least one as well????? any help or info is appreciated!! thanx...

If the B channel does not have any drives attached, then I think you should be able to disable it in the SCSI config. I suppose you could attempt to disable it anyway. Once the first partiton is installed and booting you could then build a custom kernel. It sounds like a machine that I would plan on building a custom kernel anyway. If it is a raid controller, I think there is also a raid.s boot kernel. But I don't know what controllers it is configured for. But I would think you could load the CD in a machine and review the config in the kernels tree to make that determination.

I work with the Adaptec controllers freqeuntly and have not really had any problems booting the kernel and seeing the hard disks except the latest 64 bit PCI Ultra-320 controller. Finally gave up because I was out time and the drivers were not ready for prime time. It was a production machine and stability was a crucial issue. So we fell back to the integrated 2 channel adaptec controller. It was similar to the one you are working with.

ill see what hapopens tomorrw i am going to give it anotehr shot, it is running red hat 9.0 right now [ewww] and i would like to get a real distro on it at some point....it could be a nice little server if i can get it up and running....ill keep you posted