Re: tlug: Debian installation - scsi problem

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Ulrike" == Ulrike Schmidt <ulrike@example.com> writes:

    >> OK, I do have a saved /boot/config-2.2.10 with the following
    >> settings:

    Ulrike> This also might explain why I have no file with "config"
    Ulrike> in its name in /boot?

If all you've got are the floppies, then very little documentation
will be installed.

    >> OK, your CD-ROM is NOT being recognized.  This could be due to
    >> faulty termination.  Or it might just not be hooked up.

    Ulrike> It worked with Windows with the same settings
    Ulrike> ("automatic") when I used the CD to make the install
    Ulrike> floppies ...

Well, that sounds good, except that Windows drivers often use
non-public information.  I dunno FMV machines from a cinderblock;
maybe they have special hardware (that seems silly with SCSI but you
never know with "Designed for Windows[MBS]"[1] boxen) that requires
special drivers.

    Ulrike> "Automatic" was the original setting, it is also marked
    Ulrike> with a * in the menu. But this gives a warning:

See if you continue having problems booting with "enabled".  If you
don't have problems again, you should probably continue to do that.

    Ulrike> (scsi0) <Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 5/0
    Ulrike> (scsi0) Narrow Channel, SCSI ID=7, 16/255 SCBs

Normal, I think.

    Ulrike> (scsi0) Warning - detected auto-termination

No big deal.

    Ulrike> [...]
    Ulrike> (scsi0) Cables present (Int-50 NO, Ext-50 NO)

This looks very bad.  It does not seem to have detected your internal
cable.  I assume the CD-ROM drive cannot be detected in that case.  I
wouldn't be surprised if the FMV Windose SCSI/AIC7xxx driver is
"enhanced" to ignore this information and try to initialize the drive
anyway.  Quite likely the CD-ROM drive is not properly terminated.

Make sure the cable hasn't come loose (either by checking the hardware
physically or booting Windose again).

Another possibility (given that I'm pretty ignorant on really
expensive hardware) is that you have a more advanced (wide) CD-ROM
drive attached to a 68-wire cable, but for some reason only the
50-wire cable is being checked.  But I suspect the driver would tell
you you have WIDE SCSI in that case, as well as Ultra SCSI.

    Ulrike> Why is there only ide0 and ide1 when there are three hard
    Ulrike> drives? Shouldn't there be ide2 as well? (Or maybe not?) 
    Ulrike> And what this md driver?

ide0 and ide1 are the two IDE controllers that are standard; they can
handle two drives (one master and one slave) each (ide0 -> /dev/hda
and /dev/hdb, ide1 -> /dev/hdc and hdd IIRC).  md is the "multiple
device" driver which allows you to treat several devices as a single
one (make a big partition out of several small ones sequentially or in
parallel, or automatically mirror the same data to two drives, the
several flavors of so-called RAID devices).

Footnotes: 
[1]  [MBS] = "Mark of Bullshit"

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