Re: SCSI module eata no longer loading automatically from initrd on Sid on i386

[Arthur Marsh <arthur.marsh@internode.on.net>]

Stephen Powell wrote, on 21/03/10 21:58:
> On Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:25:45 -0400 (EDT), Arthur Marsh wrote:
> > Hi, I have a DPT 2044W SCSI adaptor in this pc for a non-boot disk ... 
>
> Your post is quite long; and after reading it twice, I still don't
> understand exactly what your question is or what problem you are
> trying to solve.  I would normally expect Linux to load the driver
> modules for SCSI adapters *before* the permanent root file system is
> mounted, since, in the general case, the root file system might
> be on a partition on a SCSI disk addressed through that SCSI
> adapter.  Apparently in your case your permanent root file system is
> *not* located on a partition on a SCSI disk addressed through
> this SCSI adapter, but in the general case this might be true.
> Therefore, it makes sense that Linux would normally load this module
> early.
>
> So what's the problem?

The problem was that the eata SCSI module was not loaded from the initrd 
and therefore fsck and mount of the SCSI disk failed.

I had a look at:

http://wiki.debian.org/InitramfsDebug

and temporarily removed eata from /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, ran:

update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.32-4-686

then rebooted into that kernel, specifying break=bottom on the linux 
command line in GRUB2.

cat /proc/modules

didn't show eata, but did show all the other modules that one would 
expect to find at boot-up. Running "modprobe eata" worked, it just 
should have been loaded automatically.

Arthur.