Alpha-Linux 7.2

dpg5 · External Since: May 08, 2007 Posts: 1

Hello,

I hope some one can help.

I'm trying to install Alpha-Linux 7.2 on a DS20 Alpha.

During the install it does not recognize any hard drives. (partition
manually)
The system has a swxr controller intalled for software raid sets for
all disks.

The firmware is at 6.5 but I can go higher I believe.

How do I get the software to recognize the drives.

Thanks in advance
Dennis

DrSlinky · External Since: May 08, 2007 Posts: 2

dpg5.DeleteThis@hotmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I hope some one can help.
>
> I'm trying to install Alpha-Linux 7.2 on a DS20 Alpha.
>
> During the install it does not recognize any hard drives. (partition
> manually)
> The system has a swxr controller intalled for software raid sets for
> all disks.
>
> The firmware is at 6.5 but I can go higher I believe.
>
> How do I get the software to recognize the drives.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Dennis
>

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you're dealing with the same
problem as me. I haven't been able to get any flavors of Linux running
on my AS4100 because, apparently, Linux only has drivers that work with
the generic RAID cards I have, not the DEC firmware versions. Is the
RAID controller is a KZPSC or KZPAC (Mylex DAC960), then you've found
your problem.

DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre · External Since: Jan 16, 2005 Posts: 24

DrSlinky wrote:
>> During the install it does not recognize any hard drives. (partition
>> manually)
>> The system has a swxr controller intalled for software raid sets for
>> all disks.

depends what you all call "recognise drives".

Strictly speaking, as long as you state you have manually partitionned
your disks, it means you have run fdisk (or similar apps), what implies
the kernel could access them to alter the partition table.

DrSlinky speaks about chipset recognition, what is a compleetely
different problem.

In fact, from those 2 posts, I can see more than 5 différent sources of
problems; far too much for me to try to give any tip.

I need to know ECATLY what happens ! Using internal SCSI ? DS20's one
works perfetctly under Linux (installed Debian on some). IDE inetrnal ?
works woth some tricks. Daughter card ? we need to know the model.

Are you having problem to detect chipset during installation ? do you
aim to boot on it ? Some chips are not suported by SRM, thus cant boot,
but may get accessible after kernel boot and then be used as storage;
other are never recognised.

Partitioning problem ? Linux/Alpha does not support PC or sun
partitionning. did you afford 2 sectors for aboot during manual pert ?
if no, aboot set-up may have overwritten your aprtition table, or a part
of a file system.

Formatted manually ? hmm, all known file systems should be supported by
Linux (except Mac one).

Raid problems ? Hard ? soft ? you shall say whether the chains are
recognised by Linux or not ! they may get names on Alpha different than
on PC (device files). Hard cards may not detect chains or disks at all
if they are too recent: Alpha DS200 does not allow booting PCI2.1 cards
that need to heavily run bits of code in CPU after POST and before
proper BOOT.

somehow, your post sounds to me like: "my computer does not start, why ?"

Give all details, which stage of install fails, lspci, lsmod, lshw if
you can. Try Debian, Gentoo, and RedHat CDs, and tell us about the
differences. We especially need to know the chipset name, if it's the
internal one, and which stages do work !

We also need to know the kernel version and taste used during install.
What you call "install": to me, it's just the first part until BL
install; some people include in this word also the 2 first reboots ...
what may changes LOTS OF THINGS ! Cause in the second case, the kernel
used at reboot is not the same as from the CD; then, we need description
of both kernels (provide /proc/config.gz if you can ).

--
>o_/ DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre (aka DoubleHP) http://benoit.demaine.info/
If computing were an exact science, IT engineers would not have work \_o<

"So all that's left, Is the proof that love's not only blind but deaf."
(FAKE TALES OF SAN FRANCISCO, Arctic Monkeys)

DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre · External Since: Jan 16, 2005 Posts: 24

DrSlinky wrote:
> I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you're dealing with the same
> problem as me. I haven't been able to get any flavors of Linux running
> on my AS4100 because, apparently, Linux only has drivers that work with
> the generic RAID cards I have, not the DEC firmware versions. Is the
> RAID controller is a KZPSC or KZPAC (Mylex DAC960), then you've found
> your problem.

False, false, and false ! I have an AS4100 booting Gentoo and Debian and
I installed it on DEC960 and 22801 and 22802 and 53cxxx and also SYM1040.

Facts are: Linux prefers SRM at least to be 5.2. Linux requires DAC960
to have the very latest firmware. But, on alpha as on many other arch
(PC, Mac, Sun), Linux suports many SCSI cards. Problem on Alpha is
rather to find a chipset supported by SRM ^^

I could not get Linux work on some IBM hard-raid cards ... but, later, I
discovered that those cards produce KP even on legacy PCs ... I expect
broken driver, or maybe bugged hardware.

The real problem on alphas like AS4100 is that I could not find any card
supported by the SRM that could deal with SCSI3 (cause AS4100's PCI bus
is *very old* ). My other problem was around multiple graphic card;
seems like it's still a PCI problem, bus not supporting modern video
features (having 2 cards imply supporting the master option, amongst
other problems).

From what I have seen, most Apha problems are due to lack of
documentation (most often: people not searching for the good keywords in
google, or too lame to read pages fully). Some answers lay deep in
webservers, other deep in to-be-downloaded documentations (like
/usr/srs/linux/Documentation/* )

--
>o_/ DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre (aka DoubleHP) http://benoit.demaine.info/
If computing were an exact science, IT engineers would not have work \_o<

"So all that's left, Is the proof that love's not only blind but deaf."
(FAKE TALES OF SAN FRANCISCO, Arctic Monkeys)

DrSlinky · External Since: May 08, 2007 Posts: 2

DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre wrote:
> DrSlinky wrote:
>> I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you're dealing with the same
>> problem as me. I haven't been able to get any flavors of Linux
>> running on my AS4100 because, apparently, Linux only has drivers that
>> work with the generic RAID cards I have, not the DEC firmware
>> versions. Is the RAID controller is a KZPSC or KZPAC (Mylex DAC960),
>> then you've found your problem.
>
> False, false, and false ! I have an AS4100 booting Gentoo and Debian and
> I installed it on DEC960 and 22801 and 22802 and 53cxxx and also SYM1040.
>
> Facts are: Linux prefers SRM at least to be 5.2. Linux requires DAC960
> to have the very latest firmware. But, on alpha as on many other arch
> (PC, Mac, Sun), Linux suports many SCSI cards. Problem on Alpha is
> rather to find a chipset supported by SRM ^^

And, after many months of research and trial/error, the DAC960 is a
catch-22. For the Linux drivers to work with it, it needs to have the
newer firmware, v.2.73 or newer. This is the firmware that was provided
by Mylex for the Mylex branded RAID cards. The DEC branded RAID cards
stopped receiving new firmware after v.2.70. Granted, if you have a
newer hardware revision, which can be seen easily by having 2 SROM
sockets on the card instead of only 1, then you could always pop in
chips with the newer firmware, thereby essentially upgrading it to a
Mylex branded version. But the instant you do this, the SRM no longer
recognizes the RAID card, and you can no longer boot from it.

As mentioned in my previous post, this applies to the KZPAC and KZPSC
cards. I didn't say that it's the same case for any other cards, so I
fail to see why felt the need to mention them.

DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre · External Since: Jan 16, 2005 Posts: 24

DrSlinky wrote:
> As mentioned in my previous post, this applies to the KZPAC and KZPSC
> cards. I didn't say that it's the same case for any other cards, so I
> fail to see why felt the need to mention them.

I used to have a DAC960; and, I had to upgrade firmware; 2.71 rings me a
bell. Then Linux recognised it. But, AS4100 could still boot from it.
Note that I also had upgraded my SRM, latest one for this machine (6.1
from memory).

After a time, I got tired of having to move card to x86 to run
configuration software every time I wanted to deeply change arrays. Card
also refused to boot if disk was taken out while machine was down, even
if disk was taken from an aray that was not the booting one. That why my
DAC960 ended up on Ebay Smile

any way, I upgraded card to 2.71, and SRM to at least 6.0 (likely 6.1),
and I could boot Linux on this card perfectly.

--
>o_/ DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre (aka DoubleHP) http://benoit.demaine.info/
If computing were an exact science, IT engineers would not have work \_o<

"So all that's left, Is the proof that love's not only blind but deaf."
(FAKE TALES OF SAN FRANCISCO, Arctic Monkeys)

Steven Hirsch · External Since: May 12, 2007 Posts: 2

DEMAINE Benoit-Pierre wrote:
>
> After a time, I got tired of having to move card to x86 to run
> configuration software every time I wanted to deeply change arrays. Card
> also refused to boot if disk was taken out while machine was down, even
> if disk was taken from an aray that was not the booting one. That why my
> DAC960 ended up on Ebay Smile

I haven't done this in a while, but ISTR that you could boot the ARC console
from SRM and run a version of the RAID manager under that environment.

Steve