> If I create a very mimimal configuration that only just support the
> hardware I have, then it does not Oops. I don't know exactely what option
> I'm excluding that causes the Oops seen previously, but that should be
> possile to work out once I get it to boot completely (see below).
> With the minimal config the kernel works no matter if it's GENERIC or
> Avanti, which I think is good news :-).
Yes, that is good news.
> Although the kernel no longer Oopses, I can still not boot it as it now
> seems to have some problems with my scsi controller. I have tried
> everything from the most conservative settings to the most agressive, but
> no matter what I choose it hangs at boot with this message:
>
> scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 0, scsi0, channel 0, id 0,
> lun
> 0 Test Unit Ready 00 00 00 00 00
I've had issues like this before on aic7xxx controllers (both on Alpha and
Intel). The solution appears to either be: upgrade the scsi code, or just
reset the machine. I've had this problem before on my Alpha, and I was
able to get around it by just rebooting the machine. Sometimes, this
didn't work though. Stupid flaky drivers...
> I have also tried the exact same settings that the debian kernel use
> (which boots fine on this box), but that does not work either - which
> seems very strange to me.
If the Debian kernel boots, but their config file doesn't reproduce a
working kernel, that is very strange. What compiler are you using to
build these kernels? I had gcc 2.95.2 in the distribution for a while,
but it created such a horrible mess of c++ code that I was forced to throw
it back into contrib.
> I tried upgrading to the latest 2.2.18pre kernel, but that one has the
> same scsi issue (although it uses a newer version of the driver).
Does the newer kernel version still have problems with the generic config
file?
> ncr53c8xx: at PCI bus 0, device 6, function 0
> ncr53c8xx: 53c810 detected
> ncr53c810-0: rev=0x01, on pci bus 0 device 6 function 0 irq 11
> ncr53c810-0: ID 7, Fast-10, Parity Checking
> scsi0 : ncr53c8xx-3.4.1-20000726
> scsi : 1 host.
> scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 0, scsi0, channel 0, id 0,
> lun
> 0 Test Unit Ready 00 00 00 00 00
> ncr53c8xx_abort: pid=0 serial_number=1 serial_number_at_timeout=1
Have you looked to see if there are any kernel options you can pass at
boot time? I know the Adaptec controller drivers support the
aic7xxx=no_reset (I think that's the proper syntax) option. That
sometimes works where there's all these timeout issues. Maybe the NCR
drivers support a similar option.
> Unfortunately the kernel I'm using to boot is not compiled with support
> for the ATI Mach64, so I cannot use the Framebuffer X server.
If the kernel is compiled with VESA framebuffer support, you can use that
to run the X framebuffer server. The VESA framebuffer is a generic one
that will work with any VESA-compliant video cards. You can try to use
that by passing a video= option to the kernel. Then, a framebuffer X
config file is provided during Slackware installation as
/etc/XF86Config-fbdev.
> All the
> other servers refuse to start, with the exception of the mono server and
> the Mach64 server. The mono server starts but presents me with a
> completely messed up screen, and starting the Mach64 server has the
> effect of dumping me straight back in the SRM console.
> The graphics card in this box is a ISA based Mach64 GX (chip is:
> 210888GX00, RamDac is: AT&T PrecisionDAC ATT20C408-13).
During xf86config, there's an option to choose a Ramdac. Did you do that?
If not, try doing so. If you did, try removing that option. I enabled a
ramdac on my test machine with an S3 card, and the result was that it
didn't work at all. Removing that option got X running just fine. So,
you may need to tweak those options.
Additionally, I could throw together a very sloppy X package, built with
all the CFLAGS out of the RedHat spec file for testing purposes. That
could at least rule out any problems as a result of what machine it was
compiled on.
--
Chris Lumens - chris@slackware.com - KG6CIH
@n=(-42,-85,-83,-19,65,2,-10,-10,-15,-3,2,-10,73,-4,8,-4,2,79,8,17,15,7,14,2);
print map{chr(-$n[$i++]+ord)} sort(split(//,'place random string here')),"\n";
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