Hi,
Anyone got any ideas?
I have installed RHEL 3.0 AS on 8 Dell 2650's.
Its all patched to the latest RHN 2.4.21-20.ELsmp.
I have installed the latest Dell firmware, BIOS, network drivers and Remote access controller software.
With this version (aacraid-1.1.4-2302dkms) of aacraid (the latest from Dell) theres a bug whereby the dkms.conf file needs AUTOINSTALL="y" added. Which I have done. I have also made sure the write cache is disabled on the SCSI controller.
After all the above I am still getting:
Kernel panic on boot
call trace: [<f880f336>] scsi_setup_host[scsi_mod] oxb6 (0xc989fe88)
aac_pci_tb [aacraid] 0x0 (0xc989feac)
aac_pci_driver[aacraid] 0x2a (0xc989febc)
etc etc

Intermittently on booting.

Anyone got any ideas??? This is heading for production soon, would be great to resolve it.

Many Thanks!

Colin

This is a known problem with 2.4.21-20.EL kernels and the aacraid driver that the Dell raid controller uses. Here's how to straighten it out:

1) Boot to the older kernel if you still have it installed...it should boot fine.

2) Open /etc/modules.conf in your preferred text editor

3) Locate the line in modules.conf that deals with your aacraid adapter..it may look something like:

alias scsi_hostadapter aacraid

4) Modify the aacraid line so aacraid looks like this:

alias scsi_hostadapter aacraid_10102

5) Save the /etc/modules.conf file

6) cd into the /boot directory and run the following command:

mkinitrd -f -v initrd-2.4.21-20.ELsmp.img 2.4.21-20.ELsmp

7) Then try rebooting to the 2.4.21-20 kernel...

The updated driver for aacraid that shipped with the 2.4.21-20 kernel has caused a panic on almost every system I've seen that uses the aacraid module for the scsi disk controller.

When you upgrade the kernel to 2.4.21-20.EL, it preserves the old aacraid driver as aacraid_10102...that's why we edited modules.conf...we told the system to go and load the older aacraid driver, which works just fine.

If, for some reason, you cannot boot to the older kernel on your system, try the following:

1) Boot to rescue mode by booting the system to the 1st CD-ROM and typing linux rescue at the installation boot prompt.

2) When asked if you want to mount your filesystems say yes.

3) Your operating system will be reconstructed under /mnt/sysimage

4) Run the command chroot /mnt/sysimage to change your root context

5) Perform steps 2 - 7 in the previous fix.


I hope that helps!

Thanks for this hkb33, I'll give it a bash!!