Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 10:50:00 -0800 (PST) From: Howard Lew <digital@www2.shoppersnet.com> To: Thomas Keusch <thomas@visionaire.ping.de> Cc: freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NCR 53c875 SCSI Problems Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981029103332.17287A-100000@www2.shoppersnet.com> In-Reply-To: <19981029080043.C812@visionaire.ping.de>
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On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Thomas Keusch wrote: > 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? No I never tried because this NCR 875 machine is not a full time FreeBSD OS machine... It is booted up only occasionally in FreeBSD, but taking hours to bootup is not acceptable. So that's why I am not sure if it ever gets past that point. I remember aborting the scsi boot probe after more than 2 hours, so I am sure it takes even longer than that. > 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. > Yes. the quick fix allows you to use the scsi hard drive but not as your main FreeBSD hard drive -- a true bummer if the drive was purchased just for use with FreeBSD. > > 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. > > 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). > Yes. As far as I know, this has not been fixed... I guess the code only needs to add a check to see if the "wide scsi guess" doesn't kill the communication between the scsi drive and the controller. If it does, then switch to narrow. Otherwise, stay WIDE. If someone doesn't fix this by March of next year, maybe I will have time to fix it then... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message
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