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Bryan Whitehead wrote on Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 11:20:23AM -0800 :
After finally getting 9.0 installed (5 hours later), I noted that there is much less scsi drivers built for the BOOT kernel then other kernels. Why is this? Can't stage2 just have every kernel module built for completeness? What the hell is the point of including the mpt drivers in all the other kernels except the install kernel?
Space is at a premium. Mandrake already takes a little bit of heat because we require 64 Megs to do an install (can do it in 32, but then it can't inflate the compressed ramdisk image and hence cannot unmount the CD so only CD1 can get installed). Care to up the minimum system requirements to 96 Megs? We rule out nearly everything old in the process, which is one of the things that attracts people to Linux in the first place. Maybe not Mandrake so much, as we tend to be flashier (ie bigger footprint).
I understand, but network and scsi drivers should all be included. Maybe improve the hardware detection stuff so you can not worry about much of the hardware setup till install is done?
Or maybe force a live install if the memory is too low, only can install the first disk but they can install other software later. Chances are with a machine with only 64MB of ram is just going to be a dumb terminal.
It's a quandry. Support the old at the expense of the new? Or support the new and alienate a community of loyalists? I wish there was an easy answer.
I think as many drivers as possible should be included. or at least have a way to have every driver available. I can't be spending 5 hours per install cause I have to manually hunt for drivers, and tweak stage1 and stage2 to work.
I can understand if you just don't have the driver, but when it's there in the regular kernels, and I can't install the damn machine, what the hell?
Scsi drivers and network drivers should always be included. At least you can get the system installed and up for post-config. The way it is now I'm screwed, all new dell's shipping (the 550 series we buy) have the LSI mpt series 320 SCSI cards. (mptbase and mptscsih need to be modprobed).
Many there is a simple way to make rebuilding a stage1 disk and update stage2 so it can use any kernel? like "mkstage1 --type network --device /dev/fd0 2.4.19-24mdksmp".
Another problem was once I got stage1 fixed stage2 wouldn't run the command "modprobe mptbase; modprobe mptscsih". So I had to hack that in. Then it didn't notice the scsi device was mptscsih so the mkinitrd was crap once the install was done... I didn't know where to begin to re-hack stage2 to get it working - without breaking a ton of other crap.
Is this fixed in mdk9.1?
That I do not know authoritatively. I did find this in Mandrake-devel/cooker/i586/Mandrake/mdkinst/lib/modules.description: mptscsih Fusion MPT SCSI Host driver so it looks like possibly yes.
This was also in mdk9.0, but the driver was missing in stage2.
-- Bryan Whitehead SysAdmin - JPL - Interferometry Systems and Technology Phone: 818 354 2903 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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