Larry Sword wrote:
>
>
> "C.H. Close" wrote:
> >
> > Hi Larry,
> >
> > Thanks for your reply. Are you saying that the initrd image is run
> > before the cards SCSI bios gets loaded I hadn't thought of this; but
> > then what is the difference between powering off at the switch and
> > pulling the mains plug. If I shut down via the PC switch (its an ATX
> > system) and start up again on the switch I get the problem if I pull the
> > mains plug for ten seconds or so and then power up by the switch I don't
> > get the problem. I only installed the SCSI drive afterward when I
> > installed 8.0 when I installed 8.1 it was there already so the installer
> > should have seen it and hopefully configured the system correctly. I'm
> > sorry to contradict you, I should have been more concise in my
> > description of the problem, my apologies. I will investigate the initrd
> > route but honestly don't think it is the cause unless somehow it is
> > remaining in memory, is this conceivable?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Colin Close
>
> Hello Colin
>
> No, not exactly. The standard bootup sequence of hardware occurs as on
> all motherboards. If the BIOS is set to PNP OS =no then the BIOS will
> set all cards as to IRQ's etc. The system OS will take over after all
> the hardware is initialized by the MB and BIOS.
>
> The initrd image:
>
> "mkinitrd creates file system images which are suitable for
> use as Linux initial ramdisk (initrd) images. Such images
> are often used for preloading the block device modules
> (such as IDE, SCSI or RAID) which are needed to access the
> root filesystem. mkinitrd automatically loads IDE modules,
> all scsi_hostadapter entries and all modules in a probeall
> scsi_hostadapter .. line in /etc/modules.conf, and raid
> modules if the system's root partition is on raid, which
> makes it simple to build and use kernels using modular
> device drivers.
>
> Any module options specified in /etc/modules.conf are
> passed to the modules as they are loaded by the initial
> ramdisk."
>
> All ATX motherboards, if memory serves me correctly, retain power after
> the pc computer switch is pressed to shutdown the machine. The important
> point is that power remains to the motherboard and to the pc cards. Many
> cards, if not all, will not reset their initialized state until all
> power has been removed via the power supply, and if the computer power
> supply has no switch, by pulling the power cable from the power strip or
> wall socket. This is the reason most motherboard manuals cautions to
> shut the power switch or pull the power cord prior to removing or
> inserting any card or memory into the board.
> The short answer is the pci cards are not being re-initializes by the pc
> switch after running Windows or Linux. The power in most cases must be
> removed.
>
> Happy Holidays
>
> Larry
Hi Larry,
Ok I think I see where you are coming from now. What is actually
happening is that the Mandrake scsi driver is changing the cards
configuration to one that works when the system is running but does not
when the system is warm booted. When I boot MS the configuration is not
changed and hence I can reboot to either OS without removing the mains
plug. If however I boot to Mandrake and then warm reboot back to
Mandrake the odd config is still there so the card does not start up
properly, removing the power resets the card to the defaults which then
allows proper booting. So I think I am right in saying that he driver is
the cause of the problem.
This said that makes the driver loaded by initrd the likely culprit.
There is an alternate older driver for aic7xxx called surprise, surprise
aic7xxx_old. I suspected that this older driver might do the trick (the
card bios is dated 1996). I changed the probeall and alias statements in
modules.conf to reflect the change that I wanted and ran initrd using my
latest kernel build (which boots like lightning compared with the
original). I copied the image to my /boot directory using the Mandrake
name structure with my identifier at the end and then changed the
initrd.img symlink to reflect the changed image. I shutdown and pulled
the power plug and rebooted. The system came up fine so I warm booted
and low and behold problem solved!!!!
Grateful thanks for filling in the missing links to help me solve this
problem. To be honest I've been a bit frightened of initrd just in case
I broke something irrevocably but it's like most things in Linux if you
make sure you know whats likely to happen before you jump in most times
it works.
Hope you had a great Christmas Day and a happy new year to you and
yours.
Regards,
Colin Close
> > > This is a shoot in the dark.....
> > > If you installed the scsi after the initial installation of ML then your
> > > initrd is not preloading the driver.
> > >
> > > 1. Make a boot floppy and insure that it works.
> > > 2. Check to see what and date your /boot/initrd is, date and format. ML
> > > uses a form initrd-2.4.8-34.1mdk.img with a soft link initrd.img.
> > > 3. Look at your /etc/lilo and see / insure the the initrd is loading.
> > > I.e
> > > boot=/dev/hda
> > >
> > > map=/boot/map
> > > install=/boot/boot.b
> > > vga=normal
> > > default=linux
> > > keytable=/boot/us.klt
> > > lba32
> > > prompt
> > > timeout=50
> > > message=/boot/message
> > > menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
> > > image=/boot/vmlinuz-smp
> > > label=linux
> > > root=/dev/hda8
> > > initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.8-34.1mdksmp.img
> > > append=" hdc=ide-scsi devfs=mount"
> > > read-only
> > >
> > > 4. Look at your /etc/modules.conf file and insure the the appropriate
> > > entry for the scsi adapter is indicated.
> > >
> > > 5. Make a new initrd file. See man mkinitrd for the correct command
> > > line. NOTE! The mkinitrd normally writes the file without the .img
> > > extension to the file so you will have to change this in the /boot dir.
> > >
> > > 6. Make sure your /etc/lilo is correct after changing the /boot/initrd
> > > file. If changes are made insure that you run , as root, lilo -c to
> > > install and changes made.
> > >
> > > 7. Make sure your BIOS is set to OS PNP =no
> > >
> > > 8. Boot and check any messages displayed in the /var/log/boot.log and
> > > /var/log/dmesg.
> > >
> > > ?? What is the outcome??
> > >
> > > Larry
> > >
> > > "C.H. Close" wrote:
> > > >
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > I have Mandrake 8.1 installed on an IBM IDE drive as a dual
> > > boot with
> > > Win98 (my sons network games need this). Since I did not want MS on my
> > > main drive I resurrected an old Adaptec 2940A pci SCSI card and an IBM
> > > 4Gig drive to go with it (the card also serves my burner). I
> > > sucessfully
> > > loaded MS on this and all the appropriate boot entries have appeared
> > > under Lilo. There is however one problem in that I cannot boot the
> > > machine unless I remove the mains power first and then boot the
> > > machine!!!
> > >
> > > The cycle goes like this:
> > >
> > > 1. Unplug Mains plug from box
> > > 2. Boot machine and select Mandrake
> > > 3. Machine Boots
> > > 4. Log on then log off and reboot (init 6)
> > > 5. Machine reboots and reaches the point where the Adaptec SCSI
> > > bios is
> > > searching for devices and it just hangs until the SCSI bios
> > > prog times out, boot then progresses normally for Linux
> > > except for error messages relating to the system not being able to find
> > > the SCSI disk.
> > > Obviously I can't boot MS when this happens.
> > > 6. To reboot I have to power down the machine; remove the mains
> > > plug
> > > for a short time then
> > > replace the mains plug and boot. Everything is then OK
> > >
> > > The strange thing about all this is that if I boot to MS and reboot the
> > > problem does not occur.
> > > The conclusion I have reached is that in some way Mandrake is altering
> > > some semi volatile part of my pci configuration which is preventing the
> > > SCSI bios from operating correctly. Removing the power clears this
> > > change and allows everything to work properly.
> > >
> > > I have done quite a lot of testing such as moving around the IRQ's of
> > > the SCSI card and I have managed to get the SCSI card on IRQ11 which I
> > > believe is the default for Adaptecs 2940A. The default that Mandrake
> > > picked originally was IRQ10 which did not work either.
> > >
> > > I admit that this is an unusual configuration of drives; most people
> > > would use the SCSI as the boot drive but his configuration worked on
> > > 8.0
> > > the only difference was that I added the SCSI card and disk AFTER I had
> > > done a full install. I did have to move the interrupts around though to
> > > get it to work.
> > >
> > > Can anyone throw any light on this!!
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > C.H. Close
>
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