On Thu, 23 Dec 1999, Michael W. Shaffer wrote:
> I have been trying to solve this problem without success for about a year
> now.
>
> My hardware is:
<Specs removed>
> My problem is:
>
> After the system has been up for a random length of time (usually about a
> week or so) it will crash in the middle of the night during a full backup
> to the DAT drive using cpio. The machine hangs in either an infinite loop
> or a kernel panic. I originally was running Debian 2.1 with a 2.0.36
> kernel, and I would see the following scrolling endlessly off the screen
> after a crash:
<error messages removed>
> I have tried:
>
> - disconnecting all devices except the tape drive hard drives
> - installing the highest quality cables I can find for the external
> devices (this machine currently has about $400 US worth of Granite
> Digital cables hanging off of it).
> - installing a Granite Digital active terminator on the end of the SCSI
> chain
> - verifying that there are no interrupt or IO port confilicts both in the
> device jumper configurations and from the /proc filesystem
>
> I am completely at my wits end with this. I have searched DejaNews
> repeatedly for any discussions of kernel panics and crashes with Adaptec
> cards, Linux, SCSI in general, etc., and all I can find is one thread
> from about a year ago mentioning the same sorts of problems but no
> solution.
>
> Is this a problem that anyone else has ever had with Linux and an
> AHA1542C in particular or SCSI in general? Can anyone recommend which
> part of the setup I should change or eliminate? Is it a bad card? Are
> Adaptec cards bad in general? Is the aha1542 scsi driver problematic? Is
> Linux SCSI in general problematic?
I myself have an Adaptec 1542CF and I have started to receive problematic
errors with the card. After seeing this message, I'm tempted to get
another card from somewhere and try that out.
I have looked at adaptec's website in regards to this card (about a year
ago actually... hmm... perhaps the thread you saw was the one I started?
I also had a faulty HDD at the time...), it seems that the card requires a
bios update, and as the card is not flashable, you have to get an eeprom
burner from somewhere... I was not going to spend $600 US just to
reprogram the EEPROM of the scsi card...
If you have access to another SCSI card, then try that for a while... I'm
guessing that the 1542 series has some major problems with real operating
systems <grin>.
Regards,
Peter Ludwig
