How to Enable IRQ PCI Sharing (Debian)

[DaveR]

Hello ALL:

I can not get my system with a Promise Ultra 100 to see my hard drive. I did this from boot
linux ide4=0xd800, 0xdc02

It then sees the WD drive but hangs and will not install.

MDK and RH work just fine.

So, I bet the problem is in irq sharing. How do I enable this so I can install Debian?

TIA

 

[snidy1]

Is PCI steering enabled in bios?

 

[DaveR]

I believe it is as Win works fine. In fact 3 cards share irq9. The Promise is sharing irq7 with USB. At any rate...Mandrake 9.1 and RedHat 9 install just fine. I can play as this is a new 120GB hard Drive. I put xp on it OK as well, but no "flavor" of Debian will install!

Originally posted by: snidy1
Is PCI steering enabled in bios?

 

[Nothinman]

IRQ sharing is a function of the hardware, there is nothing to turn on in Linux

 

[DaveR]

...but MDK and RH work and see/install on the Promise and Debian will not. I can not think of anything else.

Originally posted by: Nothinman
IRQ sharing is a function of the hardware, there is nothing to turn on in Linux

 

[Nothinman]

Most likely Debian doesn't have a driver for it, by default Debian uses a 2.2 kernel, are you using the 2.4 one?

 

[DaveR]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Most likely Debian doesn't have a driver for it, by default Debian uses a 2.2 kernel, are you using the 2.4 one?

Yup...bf24 and also bf24-XFS.

 

[Nothinman]

Does the 2.4 kernel print anything about the Promise card when it boots?

 

[DaveR]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Does the 2.4 kernel print anything about the Promise card when it boots?

Yes, I can see it. I also switched to console mode and see the /proc/pci file showing that it saw the Promise, gave the irq and showed me the memory allocations.

i did this at the boot for install...

linux ide4=0xdc00, 0xd802 and it gets further...sees drive too as it id's as wd1200-xxx.

Since it is running on MDK 9.1 now, maybe I can do an lsmods to see what MDK loads?

 

[Nothinman]

You can, but if it sees the card at bootup it's most likely compiled in statically so won't matter. I'm not sure what to tell you, I've never had to use one of those cards before.

 

[drag]

It's a bit of a long shot, but you may want to play around with the bios settings in your computer. Namly the plug-n-play aware OS. Linux is plug-n-play around the same way that win98 was plug-n-pray. Try turning that on or off and see if it makes anydifferences. Also try turning off all the extra stuff in the bios like on-board audio and Lan or whatever. just to free up any extra irq's. Also try turning on and off the dedicated irq for vga graphics, although on my computer that will mess around with nvidia's drivers. Turning of usb support may be the ticket.

Probably won't make a difference, but it may help you narrow down the problem if it is a irq problem


Otherwise the worst thing would be that you will just have to recompile a custom kernel while making sure that you have the support for the promise card activated. Could be the module or the driver for your specific card is not to happy with your version of the kernel. The latest stable one is 2.4.20 and it may have a patched driver built into the update. That's one of the things that sucked with my motherboard's built in ide controller. There was a nasty bug in it that would create errors and corruptions on the HD like you had a bad cable when you enabled dma access, it took to the latest kernel that they developed a workaround so that I could increase my hd performance from dismal to decent.

Never realy used promise cards before, though. Almost got one, but they improved the driver and now I don't need one.

 

[DaveR]

Well, I still do not see why MDK works. At any rate, I could try freebsd. Why leave that out!

I have the Soyo 6BA+IV and it has a normal ide controller and HPT366 onboard! No sound or LAN but I do have USB. Soyo will NOT let me desable the HPT366 controller. I may take it to barebones and see what happens. My main system is a P4 so this one is a play system anyway. I did get Debian running on my P200MMX, but 2.4bf and kde3.1 kill the audio,

Oh, the Debian I tried on this Promise is both bf2.4 and bf2.4-XFS. The XFS is 2.4.20.

 

[DaveR]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Does the 2.4 kernel print anything about the Promise card when it boots?

I can add 1 more dist to the list of working installs! FreeBSD will see my Promise/wd drive without an issue! So far, Debian is the ONLY one that does not like it.

I ran out of time last night, but I got the mini iso of freebsd5. It said X was not found so I wonder if I need the full iso?

 

[Haden]

That's strange, I have Ultra 66 and Ultra 100TX and they both go fine under Debian, thought I'm running custom build kernels, and I've added both cards only after switching from bf2.4.
Might be a some bug in compiled kernels maybe...

 

[Nothinman]

My installs are always on really normal hardware or I use custom kernels, but isn't there an ide-pci boot image that might have drivers for this card?

 

[DaveR]

I would love to find one! I still like debian!

Originally posted by: Nothinman
My installs are always on really normal hardware or I use custom kernels, but isn't there an ide-pci boot image that might have drivers for this card?

 

[DaveR]

Well, I see the idepci flavor. I may try it but it is not sarge or bf24!

It says something about needing a patch if you use a promise 66. I assume a 100 would be the same as I believe the pciide flavor does not support scsi.

 

[Nothinman]

sarge doesn't matter, you can dist-upgrade without any problems.

Promise 100 doesn't require anything to do with SCSI, they only use the SCSI transport in Windows as a hack because the IDE layer in Windows sucks.

 

[DaveR]

Well...this was a surprise! I had a Sarge cd and it saw my Promise and WD120gb drive! However it has trouble with the Linksys LNE100tx2 nic. No other system has that problem. Is there a better install option for sarge?

I did not try the idepci floppy yet, but I also installed freebsd5 and that has always worked. BUT, I want Debian! So, what does Sarge have that bf24 does not? Also, other distros see my Linksys as a Tulip, I believe but sarge does not like it!

 

[Nothinman]

The default kernel is 2.2, bf24 is a 2.4 kernel. So it seems that the 2.2. kernel sees your card and the 2.4 one doesn't, strange.

If your linksys card uses the tulip driver just load that driver, the Debian installer gives you a chance to load extra modules.

 

[DaveR]

But it was Sarge...isn't that even newer than bf2.4?

Also, what happened to the install? It is a mess compared to the other Debian distros.

Originally posted by: Nothinman
The default kernel is 2.2, bf24 is a 2.4 kernel. So it seems that the 2.2. kernel sees your card and the 2.4 one doesn't, strange.

If your linksys card uses the tulip driver just load that driver, the Debian installer gives you a chance to load extra modules.

 

[Nothinman]

Sarge is the code name for a Debian tree, it has almost nothing to do with the version of the kernel you're running. By default woody used a 2.2 kernel, I'm not sure if sarge still does or not.

Sarge is still a work in progress and the Debian installer is being redone so I can imagine it's not 100% working yet.

 

[DaveR]

Well, I can see just what kernel it does use. Also, maybe I can try the idepci floppy/network install.

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Sarge is the code name for a Debian tree, it has almost nothing to do with the version of the kernel you're running. By default woody used a 2.2 kernel, I'm not sure if sarge still does or not.

Sarge is still a work in progress and the Debian installer is being redone so I can imagine it's not 100% working yet.

 

[DaveR]

There is a new (May 6) Sarge netinstall ISO that I may try tonight. I also may boot Knoppix as I believe it sees my NIC so I can see what IT loads for the driver. NO, Knoppix does not see my Promise Ultra 100.

 

[DaveR]

It's me talking to myself again! Well, the new Sarge did not work. I am on FreeBSD now. All is working except kde sound and my scroll mouse will not scroll. But it is fast and sees my promise/wd setup.

Still, I want my apt-get!