Hi John, Charles and others,
John wrote:
> It's always been my understanding that you can't boot from a SCSI
> disk using a modular SCSI driver, because linux has to be able to
> boot before it can read the module, and it can't read the module if
> it's booting off a SCSI drive it needs the module to boot from. This
> is why having the SCSI driver in the RAMDISK is such a good idea.
First you tell that you can't boot SCSI modularly, and then you tell us its a
good idea to use a ramdisk.
I can tell you that indeed it can be done that way. Assuming your BIOS is
able to boot from SCSI - it seems to be that way, at least Charles tells he
can boot from /dev/sda -, you can depend on the BIOS to load the initial
ramdisk, which contains the module for the SCSI controller that should be
loaded by linuxrc. The BIOS limits where you can place the kernel and the
initrd, but IDE has the same limitations.
I have done this modular booting with an Asus P2B-DS with an onboard aic7890
controller and it worked perfectly (disregarding the fact that aic7xxx.o was a
pain in the neck 18 months ago).
> If you've got an INITRD with SCSI compiled in, then the system can boot
> enough to load the kernel module off the disk.
I am not sure about your choice of words here, but you do not compile an
initrd as you compile a kernel. It's a tiny filesystem that usually contains
and loads a few modules. But indeed you (or mkinitrd) compile(s) this
filesystem.
> However, you can get around this by not using the SCSI drive to boot
> from -- either boot off an IDE drive or off a floppy.
This should not be necessary if I understand Charles correctly.
Charles wrote:
> Actually I just chickened out and compiled the aha1542 support into the
> kernel :0
So, if you can boot using this aha1542 controller you could boot using an
initrd containing the module. It makes no difference whether you use a kernel
with the driver compiled in or you use a module and an initrd. Use what you
like best. If you are using the SCSI drive as / it's not a bad idea to compile
aha1542 support into the kernel.
One thing to take care of when using modules, use matching modules/kernel. If
you try using the initrd.img from the bootfloppy, you should also use the
kernel from the floppy.
> loading aha1542 module
> /lib/aha1542.o: invalid parameter parm_io
might indicate such a conflict. Maybe you built a new kernel and forgot to
make or install the new modules?
Hope this helps you even further ;),
Leonard.
--
To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe"
as the Subject.
