PCI

INSTALLING A SCSI HD ON AN NCR53c810 PCI card.

Tested on COL 2.2N

In keeping with the StepByStep philosphy of being very specific, these Steps apply to the above card. You mileage will vary, but the Steps are a good base to work from in installing any, PCI scsi card.

For a list of supported cards vs the driver required (there are many) see

/usr/src/linux/Documentation/drivers/scsi

Step one:

Make space.

Step two:

Install the card, boot the system and do the following.

cat /proc/pci

or, from the gui window.

Kde Control Centre (big green icon bottom tray)

Information->pci.

You should see information for a NCR 53c810

PCI devices found:
Bus 0, device 10, function 0:
SCSI storage controller: NCR 53c810 (rev 35).
Medium devsel. IRQ 10. Master Capable. Latency=64. Min Gnt=8.Max Lat=64.
I/O at 0x6500 [0x6501].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe8000000 [0xe8000000].

If you do NOT see the above information, your card does not exist and there is no point proceeding.

STEP 3

modprobe ncr53c8xx

this is all that should be required. NO parameters are required since this information is picked up from the PCI interface.

STEP4

"lsmod"

verify that ncr53c8xx AND scsi_mod have been loaded.

If not, examine the output of /var/log/messages

"tail /var/log/messages"

What is happening here is that by loading the ncr pci device, modprobe has discovered it requires the generic scsi_mod.o to drive it.

STEP 5 Fdisk

It is assumed here that the hard disk is blank, or loaded with another OS. If you already have an ext2 partition on the drive, skip the following two steps. Alternatively, read on to see what's what.

type

"fdisk /dev/sda"

use 'p' to check what partitions are available. If fdisk detects a type 82 partition, ext2 is available therefore hit 'q' and skip to step 7

Otherwise use 'm' to discover what commands are available to you (basically add or delete partitions) then finally save the new partition information.

STEP 6 FORMAT

A newly partitioned disk is just that. It is not ready for any OS or file system, it is simply partitioned.

type

mke2fs /dev/sda1

this assumes the partition you wish to use as linux is the first partition of the drive and has been created in step5.

STEP 7 Mount

lsmod should now display sr_scsi ncr53c8xx, and, sd_mod (the scsi disk module).

Again, on failure, examine the output of /var/log/messages.

STEP 8 Make it permanent.

Each time you boot, you would normally be required to modprobe. There is an easy way.

In Caldera, the COAS-Kernel-Load icon allows you to install the module, permanently. Use it.

In Redhat, the principle is the same. The 2.2x kernel (in any distro) looks for modules via /etc/rc.d/rc.modules

In turn, this script is looking at /etc/modules/default

whatever modules are listed in this file become active at boot time. There are a few minor variations on the theme, such as dot default or /etc/modules/version/dot default, but the principle is fairly clear and not difficult to find.