I have several HP/COMPAQ DL380 G3 2.4Ghz machines that have HP hotplug SCSI tape drives in them. Redhat 7.3 installs all of the necessary drivers for the SCSI and net cards during installation, but fails to see the hotplug tape drive. The /proc/scsi/scsi file is empty. If I use "up2date -uf" to also force the kernel to upgrade to the latest 2.4.20-18.7 (I think) then the Hotplug tape drive is recognized automatically. I have tried the newer "cpq_cciss_RedHat73-2.4.44-2.i386.rpm" SCSI driver before upgrading the kernel, but it didn't allow the tape drive to be seen. A kernel update seems to be the only solution at this point. The problem is that I have to stay compatible with the bcm5700 net driver, the cciss SCSI driver, Aculab E1 card drivers, and Brooktrout SS7 drivers. I have seen issues with some of those drivers not working with 2.4.20x kernels (bcm5700 failed) so I am looking for the oldest kernel that will get the job done.

Just worked this with a customer .... check the cciss.txt file in your kernel source documentation. It will tell you two things:

1. if hot-plug for tapes is supported.. its not in all cciss versions

2. how to set it up

If you can't get bcm5700 to work.. try the tg3.o driver instead. Or.. go to HP's website and get there bcm5700 driver for installation after you upgrade your kernel.

Also, remember... its not just whether or not the tape drive is recognized through the cciss driver.. but whether or not its "hot-pluggable".

-KevinJ

I may have a temporary solution. If I install the new cciss driver .44 version or .46 version it doesn't fix the tape driver. However, if I download and install the new hotplug2003 rpm and hotplug base and install them then the tape drive seems to work. I don't care about hot-plug capability, I just want the drive to work if I leave it in the machine permanently. The hotplug base package requires --replacefiles in the rpm command and the hotplug2003 required a --force. Those are my two current issues with my temporary fix. RedHat 7.3 installs the Hotplug2002 rpm but insists it is newer than the hotplug2003 driver so I have to force it.