On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 17:17 -0700, Sean O'Connell wrote: > This is a follow up to my battle of wills with this machine :) > 1) I have managed to get this beastie to boot off the SATA drive > - I had to change the disk access mode from DOS to OTHER in the BIOS Interesting. I can't remember off the top of my head, but isn't there an "Auto"? When all else fails, "LBA" typically works -- especially if you're dual-booting. > - I had to disable the floppy settings in the BIOS (no floppy drive in > the machine, but it was enabled in the bios) Shouldn't affect it, as floppy disks are assigned as BIOS disk 00h (A:), 01h (B:), and fixed disks are assigned BIOS disk 80h (C:), 81h (D:), etc... > After these two changes (oh, and reinstalling the machine), the machine > worked fine. I had made the change in the bios and done a grub- > install /dev/sda from chroot in rescue mode, but it panicd in the > nv_sata coming back up. I'm guessing the different geometry settings > caused it to barf. Hmmm, depends. Linux is fairly good on auto-detecting geometry, even when the BIOS and legacy BIOS/DOS Disk Label differ. The problem is if you wrote the GRUB MBR when you booting into the Rescue disk and it was using a different geometry. Then yes, that would dork it up. @-ppp > 2) The kernel/linux does *NOT* see the 3Ware card, What about the BIOS? The ServerBIOS will list all storage cards it sees. It should let you select what boot device you want. Also, try _manually_ loading the 3w-xxxx driver with "modprobe 3w-xxxx". > which is in the 64 bit 133Mhz slot. Which according to the diagram at > http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html is on Bridge A. And the manual concurs with you too (see pages 9 & 10): ftp://ftp.tyan.com/manuals/m_s2895_100.pdf Hmmm, maybe you should try putting it on Bridge B and closing jumper J92. That will force the PCI-X slots to 66MHz, which might be required to support the 64-bit at 66MHz PCI 3Ware Escalade card. I didn't run into this -- especially on the Bridge A which is a dedicated PCI-X slot for 1 card. > Here is the listing for lspci > 00:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3) > 00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev a3) > 00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation CK804 SMBus (rev a2) > 00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2) > 00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3) > 00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2) > 00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev a2) > 00:07.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3) > 00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3) > 00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2) > 00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3) > 00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3) > 01:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) > 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV45GL [Quadro FX 3400/4400] (rev a2) > 80:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3) > 80:01.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3) > 80:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3) > 80:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3) Hmmm, it's like the PCI-X busses are not even there. Sometimes BIOSes can be configured to snoop all PCI busses. Also try resetting all configuration data. This is very troubling. > Should I not see the card? I wonder if this chipset is not fully > supported by the 2.6.9-11ELspm kernel? Has _nothing_ to do with the chipset. All chipset are APIC/I2C compliant, and present a PCI bus as a PCI bus -- be it bridged, HT'd, etc... PCI, PCI-X, PCIe. So, going back into the ServerBIOS, is there a setting for various card BIOS detections? > Or does anyone have any suggestions for kernel flags? Hmmm, I don't think "noapic" will help you here. It's clearly a PCI-X bus detection issue -- be it the POST not configuring the chipset registers, or the Linux kernel just not seeing anything. I'd clearly point to the POST, if you're not seeing it as an available boot card in the BIOS. > In dmesg output I see > 3ware Storage Controller device driver for Linux v1.26.00.039. > 3w-xxxx: No cards found. Hmmm, so you did try manually loading the driver, eh? > I could try moving the 3Ware card to one of the slower PCI-X slots and > see if that helps. Perhaps, I will give this a whirl manana. I am at > least encouraged that the bloody thing installs and boots on its own :) Yeah, try Bridge B and slowing it down to 66MHz by closing J92. -- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you to be anything but richer than you. Any tax rate that penalizes them will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below them). Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele- mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism. So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work. ;->