Extremely frustrated w/Debian

From: Anonymous (juggling_ben_at_excite.com)
Date: 07/25/04 

Date: 24 Jul 2004 15:56:44 -0700

Hello

I am having some major issues with Debian and Linux in general at the
moment. I was runnning Debian stable (woody) release on a custom
server. Here are the main details of the server:

Tyan Thunder 100 motherboard with an Intel 440BX chipset
2 Processors: 1 P11 450 MHz and 1 PIII 450 MHz
Adaptec AIC-7895 SCSI controller (onboard)
Samsung 160 GB hard drive
Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM drive

(Sorry no model # for the HD or the CD at the moment)

Anyway, it used to have a small ~10 GB hard drive, but I wanted to
upgrade to the 160GB drive. So lets see what happened:

The BIOS wouldn't detect the HD (it's kind of old) so the 32GB clip
jumper went in. The Debian kernel was 2.4.18, so the kernel would
only read ~128 GB of the drive. Good, but I want to use the whole
thing. Debain does not have a 2.4.19 kernel, where the auto-geometry
support comes in. Damn, looks like I have to compile a new kernel.

I make a 2.4.26 kernel (from backport.org) and it seems ok. It will
only boot with SMP disabled. Not good, but it is not very important.
The hard drive was detected correctly. YAY! But then problem #2 comes
up: The new kernel (and any kernel I downloaded) would hang at
detecting the SCSI controller. It would detect it ok, then freeze up.
 And there was nothing in the logs. Not too good at all. I need that
CD drive. It was detected ok under the stock 2.4 bf kernel.

Just to test it, I disabled SCSI in my BIOS, and then more errors.
This time with the net cards. This is imperative as this is a server,
even though it is not heavily used.

Anyway, my biggest issue is with the HD. The Debian testing version
(Sarge, using both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel) were not configured with
auto-geometry support, either. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH <- that's me
screaming. And I swear that Windows CD was laughing at me.

BTW, the HD (and everything) is detected fine under the Knoppix CD I
plopped in to test it. I would like to use Debian, though, as it is
what I am most experienced with in this server application.

Please help me!! If you have any idea, please tell me, or point me to
the appropriate newsgroup, message, or site. Thank you very much

BennyP

Relevant Pages

  • "CIFS VFS: server not responding" with some client/server combinations
    ... As it might be kernel related and others ... A Samba server running Debian Etch with latest updates. ... I don't know what's different with Etch on the client, ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Problems with Intel® Server SE7501WV2 & SCSI HOST RAID
    ... I'm recently preparing a server for our data center. ... So I fired up the Debian CD and started the installation. ... After googling around a little bit I found the page with the scsi drivers. ... If I compile a kernel on another system, how can I start with this ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Extremely frustrated w/Debian
    ... I was runnning Debian stable release on a custom ... Here are the main details of the server: ... The Debian kernel was 2.4.18, ... > detecting the SCSI controller. ...
    (alt.linux)
  • Re: Debian on a Dedicated Server
    ... That's what the server I run does. ... > comes with 2.6 kernel and latest packages. ... > I really like Debian but if it needs to compile everything fromscratch ... It will definitely be more work than using Fedora or ...
    (Debian-User)
  • NFS problems with through 2.5.x to 2.6.0-test9
    ... When the server is running the ... kernel, as a client the 2.6 series seem to work perfectly, excluding ... Interesting problem arose when I attempted switch the server's kernel to ... with and without nfsv4 support compiled in (was considering testing it at ...
    (Linux-Kernel)