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Date:      Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:25:27 -0500
From:      "P. Larry Nelson" <lnelson@uiuc.edu>
To:        aic7xxx@freebsd.org
Subject:   module.conf options
Message-ID:  <41533F47.6090301@uiuc.edu>
In-Reply-To: <1071040145.3fd6c691ca24b@ablett.imvs.sa.gov.au>
References:  <1071040145.3fd6c691ca24b@ablett.imvs.sa.gov.au>

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At least I think this is a module.conf options question.

I built a RedHat EL system (RHEL AS_3_U3) on a box that has
an aic7902 Ultra320 internal scsi controller.  It also has
an external aic7892a U160/m controller to which nothing was
attached at build time.

So, now I attach an external Nexsan raid system to the external
U160 controller and the system, upon reboot (and via kudzu,
the new hardware discovering tool), sees the controller and
asks if I want to configure it.  Well sure, sez I, and I click
on the "configure" button and the kudzu GUI window "blips" and
goes away and the system continues booting up normally.
(As an aside, I will mention that this raid is already in use
as /home on another system running RH9.0 on a different but
identical aic7892a controller, so I know there's nothing wrong
with it.)

After the system is up and running, I notice that the system
does not see the newly attached raid, nor is there evidence
in /var/log/messages that it saw the U160/m at bootup.  Most
strange since kudzu says it saw it and I told it to configure it.
Even stranger - when I fire up the hardware browser GUI, it
shows the aic7892a U160/m under "SCSI Devices", but under "Hard
Drives", it shows only the system disk and not the attached raid.

Since most of our systems have front removable bays for the disks,
I decided to pull this AS_3_U3 system disk built on an ultra320
controller and put it into a system with the slower U160/m controller
and it won't boot.

So, my question is: is there a parameter I can place in
/etc/modules.conf that will allow this system to boot on the
slower controllers, but more importantly to the task at hand,
allow it to see an attached disk on the external U160/m while
booting on the Ultra320?  That is, is there some way to tell
the system that even tho the kernel was built with the fast
Ultra320 driver, that it's really ok to also accept a slower
U160/m device?  For that matter, why won't the Ultra320 driver
"talk down" to its slower compatriots?

I suspect that if I rebuild the system on the original Ultra320
controller with a disk attached to the U160/m, it would load all
the correct parameters or whatever, but I really would rather not
have to do that if there's a simple workaround.

Or is this a boot time option rather than a modules.conf thing?

Thanks!
- Larry



-- 
P. Larry Nelson (217-244-9855) | Systems/Network Administrator
461 Loomis Lab                 | U of I, CITES Departmental Services
1110 W. Green St., Urbana, IL  | Consultant to: High Energy Physics Group
MailTo:lnelson@uiuc.edu        | http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/lnelson
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  "Information without accountability is just noise."  - P.L. Nelson



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