Bulk Tape Eraser / 486 Linux box problem SCSI

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Sat Jun 22 00:50:53 2002

It was thus said that the Great John Boffemmyer IV once stated:
>
> This is on topic since ALL equipment except the replacement hard drive are
> over 10 years old.
> I have a 486x33Mhz with pure 30pin SIMMS (no 72 mix here) maxed out at 16MB
> (16 of these x 1MB), with EISA bus. I have an Adaptec 1740A SCSI
> controller, a Trident ISA video card, a Creative Labs Sound Blaster ISA, a
> DCA ISA / MCA Token Ring Adapter (obviously using the ISA), a 10Mbit ISA
> NIC, Generic I/O card with floppy and IDE, 32x IDE CD-ROM and a Seagate
> Elite 9 ST410800N 10/9GB SCSI drive (set to ID 0 since the 1740A insists
> that you use ID 0 to boot the machine). I am trying to load Slackware 7.1
> on it. Problem: how do I get the damned install from floppy to see the
> CD-ROM and see the hard drive properly? It goes to start the installer and
> it comes up loading the initial install kernal with this error:
> SCSI host found at (0)
> Unable to load SCSI host (0)
> Now, mind you, I can see and play with the damned drive in PC DOS 7, booted
> from Floppy. Why not in Linux? I am removing hair at this point since it
> took me 2 weeks to restore the system to a working state as it is. Also,
> anyone know of a friggin GUI utility that allows you to still use the
> keyboard (tab, space bar, etc) for drive partitioning and editing to set up
> a Linux partition (possibly as a bootable util from a floppy?)? Guessing in
> a command prompt really blows. The plan is to get it up as an actual server
> on the broadband cable here so I can offer email and web space in the
> future (trying to help friend of mine over at dhs.org unload some of the
> users on his aging server and bring them up to date).
> Any input will be greatly appreciated.

  As someone said later on, try an older version of RedHat. 5.2 is good, as
I've successfully used that on a variety of older machines [1], and you can
secure them down to they are less vulnerable, but if you do that, then
you'll either have to install the development system with everything else,
or have another box with the same version of Linux [2] to install updated
programs like Apache and/or Bind.

  As for your problems, first, I would remove all but the required cards
(drop the sound blaster and token ring). Second, make sure the kernel you
are booting to do the install has the proper SCSI drivers in it. RedHat is
pretty good about this, but if I remember my Slackware (way back in '93 or
'94) you had to select the proper boot disk to match your hardware.

  I know the later RedHat installations default to something other than
fdisk, but it is still available if you prefer it (fdisk is an option under
RedHat 5 and 6, but for later versions I'm not sure, not having installed
RedHat 6.2 or higher).

  Also, for older machines, I find the following partitioning scheme (if you
are going for Linux-only boot with RedHat) to work wonders:

        Partition 1: 5M mount as /boot
        Partition 2: twice physical ram, swap
                        upto 128M max
        Partition 3: rest of disk mount as /

  /boot contains the actual kernel and since older BIOSes have problems
loading past 500M or so, this ensures that the kernel will reside on space
that the BIOS can see (which lilo uses to load the kernel).

  If you use something other than RedHat, then you might want to try
something like:

        Partition 1: 200M mount as /
        Partition 2: twice physical ram swap
                        upto 128M ram
        Partition 3: half remaining space mount as /usr
        Partition 4: half remaining space mount as /home

  or for a server configuration, replace the last partition with /var (for
log files and spool directories).

  -spc (Hope this helps some )

[1] My colocated machine is a 32MHz 486SX running Linux 2.0.39
        (basically a base RedHat 5.2) running Apache and Sendmail and no
        development system), my firewall is a 66MHz 486DX [3] with Linux
        2.0.39 (again, a base RedHat 5.2 install with no development system)
        and my primary machine is a 120MHz AMD 5x86 (Linux sees it as a 486)
        running Linux 2.0.36 (custom RedHat 5.2 install, with development
        system).

        I also managed to get a bastardized version of RedHat 5.2 installed
        on a system with only 4M RAM and 120M harddrive (seeing how the
        RedHat 5.2 installer wanted 16M RAM and something like a 200M
        harddrive to even *think* of installing), but it isn't for the faint
        of heart (although if anyone wants the gory details, I'll be more
        than willing to share 8-)

[2] I tend not to keep development systems on full production servers,
        preferring to do my development on a dedicated development machine.
        If a server is compromised, it makes it all that much more difficult
        for the script kiddies to further do damage if they can't compile
        their root kits on the server.

        And while you can probably get by with developing under, say, RedHat
        6.2 for deployment on a RedHat 7.2 box, you do need to keep in mind
        the differences and what not, so I find it easier to make sure the
        servers and development boxes are as close as possible to being the
        same.

[3] Why not use my firewall as my colocated server? Um ... well, I got
        the colocated server before I aquired my firewall machine, and
        secondly, the firewall machine is a Compaq, and Compaqs are well ...
        unique ... and are sometimes quite painful to get Linux to run on
        them.
Received on Sat Jun 22 2002 - 00:50:53 BST