Bug#279491: No disk detected on an IBM RS6000 7043-260 (sym53c8xx driver)
Package: kernel-image-2.6.8-power3
Version: 2.6.8-6
Severity: normal
hi,
i tried to install sarge with daily d-i on a ppc64 machine.
the machine is a standard IBM 7043-260 (CHRP) with 2 x 64bit POWER3
processors, 1 GiB of RAM and 2 x SCSI disks on the on-board symbios
controller. the only unusual detail is the graphic card: a matrox g200
instead of the standard gxt3000p (lucky me ;). all hardware appear to
work properly under AIX.
the short summary:
- the SCSI driver (sym53c8xx) does not detect the attached disks
i could netboot the machine with a power3 d-i daily snapshot:
http://people.debian.org/~luther/d-i/images/daily/power3/netboot/
after applying the elf header work-around described in Bug#279370
the d-i process goes on nicely until i get to the storage hardware
configuration that appear to hang. looking at the logs i see the slooooow
progress of the sym53c8xx driver initialization, waiting for tents of
HOST RESET, BUS REST and other error messages. one per lun.
after half an hour the initialization is over, but the d-i stops
with no disk is found :(. i'm lost.
time for an irc with leighbb (and benh) on #ppc64. i don't have much
of a bug report to present, but consensus is reached that it looks like
an irq problem, the fact that the d-i uses a 32bit kernel on a 64bit
can well be to be the trigger, so leighbb kindly send me the 64bit
kernel he uses to boot his 7043-260s.
the kernel 'should be' a vanilla one plus ppc64 patches.
it has all the drivers i need built-in, so i don't need additional
modules. for same reason i had to use the same black magic as above,
but i finally manage to get the happy penguin on the screen with:
> boot net:<server_ip>,,<client_ip> root=/dev/fd0 load_ramdisk=1 devfs=mount
the root.img floppy is in the floppy drive.
the boot message tells all the hardware is working, the SCSI driver
finds the attached disks without problem, but...
kernel panic, no root file system on /dev/fd0... (or samething like
that)
in the mean while i found a patch in the debian kernel:
2.6.8/debian/drivers-scsi-sym53c8xx_revert.dpatch.bz2
with description:
## DP: Description: Revert driver to 2.6.5 version; DV breaks on some configs
## DP: Patch author: dann frazier
## DP: Upstream status: willy/jejb notified - dannf getting them debug access
that appears to change at least one bit of the scsi reset handling.
so i am currently trying to re-compile the debian kernel without
the drivers-scsi-sym53c8xx_revert.dpatch.bz2 patch and/or try a
ppc64 cross-build. but tha machine is not easily reachable and i
need to integrate the kernel in the d-i enviroment (not easy for me!)
cheers,
alessandro
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-1-k7-smp
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
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