Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 08:00:43 +0000 From: Thomas Keusch <thomas@visionaire.ping.de> To: Howard Lew <digital@www2.shoppersnet.com>, freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NCR 53c875 SCSI Problems Message-ID: <19981029080043.C812@visionaire.ping.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980930232911.11893D-100000@www2.shoppersnet.com>; from Howard Lew on Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 11:40:42PM -0700 References: <19980928053655.19907@visionaire.ping.de> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980930232911.11893D-100000@www2.shoppersnet.com>
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On Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 11:40:42PM -0700, Howard Lew wrote:
> > I have a very similar/the same problem with a SymbiosLogic
> > 8750SP Ultra-SCSI controller and two IBM DCAS 4.1 Gb HDDs.
> >
> > I did not find a solution yet, but it seems that the problem on
> > my box is related to FreeBSD trying to find out the size of the disks.
> > This produces basically the same error as yours, but quits scanning
> > with an "could not get size" error for each disk after a while.
>
> Yes, this is exactly the same problem I am having. I guess if I wait a
> very long time, it might get past the boot probe after failing to detect
> the affected drives, but generally the boot probe shouldn't take 1 hour or
> more to do.
Did you ever try if it gets past that state? If so, how long did it take?
> > I took of the entire bus from the controller, so that the controller
> > was the only SCSI device in the system. FreeBSD doesn't choke on the
> > controller itself, it's the disks.
>
> Yes, it is the disks -- not the controller.
>
> There is an easy fix if you already have a working FreeBSD system that
> is booting off another drive. As long as you are not using the WIDE bus,
> you can force everything to 8 bit mode. I found that changing the
> SCSI_NCR_MAX_WIDE to 0 does the trick. Of course, this forces 8 bit
> mode and disables the WIDE bus, so you should not have any devices on the
> WIDE bus.
I don't have ANY Wide devices. The controller is Ultra SCSI only, but has a
Wide capable chipset nevertheless. So this fix will work for me, the only
drawback being that I have to install do an IDE disk first, learning how
to compile the kernel first, ... etc.
> As it is, this is not a real fix because you need a working system to
> make the changes in ncr.c and then recompile the system. So if a new
> user wants to install FreeBSD on his hard disk, this quick fix will not
> work as they won't be able to get through the installation.
I've been using Linux for a year now, so I guess I have the experience to
get my system working, but I'm still dependant on an IDE disk, which I
luckily still have.
A totally inexperienced new user would have at least a really hard time
to install onto SCSI disks under these circumstances, that's right.
Odds are, that there are more narrow SCSI controllers out there which have
this "feature" of a Wide chipset, so I guess an automatic fallback to
narrow mode would be a good thing(tm).
Anyway, I will try your fix. Thank you for that.
Have a nice day
--
thomas. .powered.by.debian/linux.
irc.:.#meeting.points, #frust.ger
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