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
> 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
>
>
> --
> Sword'sEdge
> VoiceMail/Fax: (858) 860-6406 x1587
>
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