Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: linux-image-2.6.20-16-powerpc
On my PowerPC Mac with an internal Fast SCSI-2 bus built-in on the
motherboard (uses 'mesh' driver as do all pre-IDE Macs), the Feisty
kernel (2.6.20-series) during boot detects and then promptly offlines
all except one SCSI device on the bus, out of 3 total hard disk drives
and 2 CD drives, and leaves those devices offlined in the post-booted
system. This happens both during a Feisty install (clean install tested
via both the Netboot and CD methods, altho' the CD installer stops at
failing to detect a CD) and also in the complete Feisty system as
installed on that one accessible drive
In the past, Edgy was able to detect and access all drives flawlessly,
as do Debian Sarge, Etch and Lenny; thus, it appears that something
different about Feisty has broken what was working perfectly before. I
might conjecture that it may have something do with the 'mesh' driver's
interface to the kernel, or perhaps the initrd is misloading something,
or loading a conflicting module, or loading modules in a problematic
order?
The lone disk that ~is~ left accessible to Feisty is different in one
obvious way: it is a Wide-Fast SCSI drive connected to the internal Fast
SCSI-2 bus by a small port-converter adapter board (which has no active
circuitry to speak of, just converts pinouts from the Micro-D port on
the Wide drive to the 50-pin SCSI ribbon connector on the bus). It also
appears to have been originally mfd for use in Sun applications, if the
distant *nix-family association there may (not) be at all relevant to
why this one works and all the others don't. This drive (at SCSI ID:1)
and its partitions show up at /dev/sdc[1-7] during install (changes to
/dev/sdb[1-7] in the installed system), which indicates that Feisty is
at least detecting the presence of an sda and sdb (also sdd), albeit
without any partitions, before it offlines them for any I/O access.
Physically unplugging this drive does not restore access to any of the
other devices; removing it results in ~no~ drives accessible to Feisty.
Of the two PCI cards in my system (one USB and one FireWire), unplugging
all peripherals from those cards made no difference, nor did swapping
their slot-order around, nor did physically removing either or both
cards. Thus, it appears PCI is not relevant to this issue. I have read
one report that using a SCSI controller PCI card worked fine, which
reinforces my suspicion that the Mac internal SCSI bus and its 'mesh'
driver module, or the loading of modules, are still the most likely
places to investigate.
dmesg attachment to follow; relevant lines look like this contiguous
excerpt:
mesh: target 0 synchronous at 5.0 MB/s
sd 0:0:0:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
** Affects: linux-source-2.6.20 (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: Unconfirmed
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Disks on internal SCSI bus offlined during Feisty boot, no I/O thereafter
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/118319
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