RH7.2 install weirdness

[Kevin Brown]

> > > Thanks for the offer, but I won't be able to make it to the meeting.  I was able
> > > to make some progress by attaching an unused external SCSI drive to one of the
> > > Adaptec cards.  I set up the partitions on the external drive how I'm gonna want
> > > the array setup.  I'm hoping that I can then just dd one partition to another
> > > after building a working kernel with the Mylex controller builtin.
> >
> > This is what I was going to suggest (except using an IDE drive instead of
> > an external SCSI drive).  Finish the install so you can play around with
> > the system without the confining straight-jacket install program.  Don't
> > bother with dd, use cp -a instead, then the partitions don't have to be
> > exactly the same.  Then you can choose any kernel you want to get the RAID
> > array operational.
> >
> > Study up on GRUB.  You will need to understand it in order to tell GRUB
> > where you've moved the new kernel and root partition for booting.
> 
> OK, I currently have a bootable floppy that loads the smp kernel and can now
> boot to the drive on the Adaptec controller (for some reason it won't boot
> straight from the drive).  cat /proc/pci and see the Mylex controller listed
> there (I'm assuming this means the kernel knows it's there and can use it).  Now
> my next problem, how do I figure out the names of the two "drives" that are on
> it so I can begin formatting them.
> 
> /dev/sda is the name of the drive on the adaptec.  Thought maybe /dev/rd/c0d0
> would be a drive on the Mylex, but fdisk says there isn't a device there.

Well, today I think I finally found out what the real issue is with RH and the
Dac960 controller.  The driver has a firmware dependency issue where it won't
work with anything older than v3.xx firmware.  The card in the tower was
upgraded to 2.73, but to take it to 3.xx will require the purchase of a second
chip for it and then a reprogramming of both chips to accept the 3.xx code.  So
I'm in the process of ripping the controller out of the server box to place in
the tower so that I can use the controller that is already at 3.xx.

So I now have two dac960 controllers that will need to be upgraded physically
and one working controller for linux.