In a system with a Mylex DAC960 as its only mass-storage controller, a CDROM is attached to one of the three channels. The Mylex DAC960 BIOS and Firmware "see" the CDROM and identify it correctly. The "Enable boot from CDROM devices" option is enabled in the Mylex DAC960 BIOS. The Gentoo LiveCD (gentoo-3stages-x86-1.4_rc4) starts booting, but when the DAC960 driver is loaded into the kernel, the CDROM can then no longer be accessed (the installation then fails). Upon investigation, it appears that the DAC960 driver does not create the special block/character device files for CDROM devices, and no documentation can be found, even on the Dandelion Digital page, on how to manually create the block/character files (e.g.: what major/minor numbers to use for the "mknod" command).
From another system with the identical DAC960 controller (but running Debian Linux that was installed from over the network), here's a copy of the /proc/rd/c0/current_status file, in case it's helpful: ***** DAC960 RAID Driver Version 2.4.11 of 11 October 2001 ***** Copyright 1998-2001 by Leonard N. Zubkoff <lnz@dandelion.com> Configuring Mylex DAC960PD PCI RAID Controller Firmware Version: 3.52-0-02, Channels: 3, Memory Size: 8MB PCI Bus: 1, Device: 14, Function: 0, I/O Address: 0xFC00 PCI Address: 0xFF9FFF80 mapped at 0xE0822F80, IRQ Channel: 9 Controller Queue Depth: 64, Maximum Blocks per Command: 128 Driver Queue Depth: 63, Scatter/Gather Limit: 17 of 17 Segments Stripe Size: 64KB, Segment Size: 8KB, BIOS Geometry: 255/63 Physical Devices: 0:0 Vendor: WDIGTL Model: WDE18300 ULTRA2 Revision: 1.30 Serial Number: WT7060094910 Disk Status: Online, 35760128 blocks 0:1 Vendor: WDIGTL Model: WDE18300 ULTRA2 Revision: 1.30 Serial Number: WS7060096284 Disk Status: Online, 35760128 blocks 0:2 Vendor: WDIGTL Model: WDE18300 ULTRA2 Revision: 1.30 Serial Number: WT7060010458 Disk Status: Online, 35760128 blocks 0:3 Vendor: CONNER Model: SCR1219VER001.08 Revision: 0.28 0:4 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST34371W Revision: 0532 Serial Number: JDR139230K8QUZ Disk Status: Online, 8495104 blocks 0:5 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST34371W Revision: 0532 Serial Number: JD9841750MTWUT Disk Status: Online, 8495104 blocks 0:6 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST34371W Revision: 0532 Serial Number: JD3914410MTWUT Disk Status: Online, 8495104 blocks 1:0 Vendor: WDIGTL Model: WDE18300 ULTRA2 Revision: 1.30 Serial Number: WT7060085243 Disk Status: Online, 35760128 blocks 1:1 Vendor: WDIGTL Model: WDE18300 ULTRA2 Revision: 1.30 Serial Number: WS7060043810 Disk Status: Online, 35760128 blocks 1:2 Vendor: WDIGTL Model: WDE18300 ULTRA2 Revision: 1.30 Serial Number: WT7060118108 Disk Status: Online, 35760128 blocks 1:3 Vendor: CONNER Model: SCR1219VER001.08 Revision: 0.28 1:4 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST34371W Revision: 0532 Serial Number: JD6942030MTWUT Disk Status: Online, 8495104 blocks 1:5 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST34371W Revision: 0532 Serial Number: JDN771750CK1SW Disk Status: Online, 8495104 blocks 1:6 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST34371W Revision: 0532 Serial Number: JDK842990Z0K22 Disk Status: Online, 8495104 blocks 2:0 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST51080N Revision: 0958 Serial Number: PB473913 Disk Status: Online, 2074624 blocks 2:1 Vendor: CONNER Model: CFP1080S LKM1.05 Revision: 4649 Serial Number: EX9N8TE Disk Status: Online, 2074624 blocks 2:2 Vendor: CONNER Model: CFP1080S LKM1.05 Revision: 4649 Serial Number: EX9FQT8 Disk Status: Online, 2074624 blocks 2:3 Vendor: CONNER Model: CFP1080S LKM1.05 Revision: 4649 Serial Number: EX9695M Disk Status: Online, 2074624 blocks 2:4 Vendor: NEC Model: CD-ROM DRIVE:462 Revision: 1.13 2:5 Vendor: QUANTUM Model: FIREBALL1080S Revision: 630I Serial Number: 122611420717 Disk Status: Online, 2074624 blocks 2:6 Vendor: QUANTUM Model: FIREBALL1080S Revision: 1Q0E Serial Number: 341564341790 Disk Status: Online, 2074624 blocks Logical Drives: /dev/rd/c0d0: RAID-5, Online, 178800640 blocks, Write Back /dev/rd/c0d1: RAID-5, Online, 42475520 blocks, Write Back /dev/rd/c0d2: RAID-0, Online, 12447744 blocks, Write Back No Rebuild or Consistency Check in Progress The driver "sees" the CDROM on Channel 2, SCSI ID 4, but there's no known way to create a special character/block device file to access this CDROM. The particular system shown above runs multiple OSes (Debian Linux 3.0, Solaris 9 x86 and Windows 2000), the latter two OSes of which have no problems "seeing" and accessing the CDROM device attached to a Mylex DAC960 channel.
This bug has been inactive for a very long time. Could you try again, using a newer LiveCD? You mentioned not knowing what major/minor numbers to use, but if you can get it to work on Debian, can't you just 'ls -l /dev/rd/wherever_a_scsi_cdrom_lives' to get the numbers, then 'miknod firstnumber secondnumber /dev/cdrom' to create the device? I'm resolving this as test-request. Please reopen if the problem persists.
Unfortunately, I think you misunderstood what I wrote concerning the mention of "Debian Linux." The Debian Linux box cannot "see" the CDROM on the DAC960 controller either. I used the Debian Linux box to get a sample of the /proc/rd/c0/current_status file (and include it in the bug report) to help offer whatever information would be helpful in "divining" the major / minor numbers. I'm not sure using a more recent copy of the LiveCD will help either, as the DAC960 driver is pretty much the same standard "Dandelion Digital" driver found on all Linux distros (http://www.dandelion.com/Linux/DAC960.html). This driver hasn't been touched/updated (at least from the author at Dandelion Digital) in a long time. However, in the spirit of being as helpful as I can be to contribute to the resolution of this problem, I will give the latest LiveCD a try in the next week or so.
The new livecd wont work either as the dac960 uses nonstandard device nodes for a cdrom, it would take a rewrite of the initrd to work, maybe in the future, but as time is precious this is low priority, sorry.
old bug, reopen if necessary
