Mandrake 10.2, 2006.0 and Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller 1945

On Thursday 03 August 2006 04:38, F. Baker stood up and spoke the following words to the mbuttes inalt.os.linux.mandrake...:

Before I begin, please do not top-post and please attribute the quoting correctly. I've had to snip out more lines than the reply to this post is going to take... :-

Now, the *only* two things I can still think of with regard to your problem is that... (a) your download was corrupted - you still haven't verified this - or; (b) there is something physically wrong with your 29160 controller.

My money would now be on the latter choice, since you report other installations to have worked flawlessly.

First of all, check whether the card is still seated properly in its slot. Try another slot if necessary to rule out any interrupt conflicts on the PCI bus. Secondly, have that card checked hardware-wise.

Note: having the card function within parameters in Windows is no indication whatsoever, as Windows does not check hardware for flaws, while the Linux kernel does. Windows will only discover flaws in hardware when this specific hardware makes Windows go belly-up.

Aside from any of the two abovementioned possibilities, there is no other scenario. As I stated before and as I will state again here and now, the Adaptec 29160 family of SCSI host adapters - as well as most other Adaptec hardware - is supported natively in the Linux kernel as it is packaged by the kernel development team. The drivers for these devices are developed in direct and close cooperation with the Adaptec people, who have their own driver developers aid in the process.

When a distribution is being developed, the distro hackers take whatevervanillakernel is marked stable at that moment and then add patches to add extra functionality, and at a later stage to fix bugs and backport features from an already latervanillakernel tree.

The bottom line is that the distribution stock kernels - such as the ones from Mandriva - support the very same hardware as is supported by thevanillakernel tree.

As a testimonial to that, this is the second machine I own in which there are 29160 cards. One of these cards came from my previous workstation, the other one is the 29160N variant of this adapter.

Thusfar, I have always used Mandrake - now called Mandriva - distributions, and I have never had any problems with regard to these SCSI cards. Ergo, if you do have problems getting the card recognized by a perfectly functional and contemporary GNU-Linux distribution such as Mandriva 2006, there *must* be something wrong with your adapter card.

Depending on how old the card is and whether it was an OEM or a "boxed" adapter, you may be able to apply for an RMA procedure. I'm not sure what the warranty on "boxed" Adaptec equipment is, but I believe it might be three years.

Hope this was useful... ;-)

-- With kind regards,

*Aragorn* (Registered GNU-Linux user #223157)