Netfinity 5500 M20 - SCSI disks not recognized by OS (driver problem?) 1

[Biffoz]

Hi!
I've an old IBM Netfinity 5500 M20 with 2 SCSI disks (9Gb each) to use.

I'm trying to install the latest debian (6.0.1a) but during the installation the OS can't find any disks. Actually I don't really need to be debian my OS (but I'd like to), and I tried also with SUSE, centOS, Fedora and WinNT... with the same result (no disk found).

I've read some helpful threads here (

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=749338

or

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=622748&page=48)

but I didn't solve the problem.

I've run UpdateXpress (v4.07) to update firmwares etc.. and everything went fine. I've run also serverRAID (v6.11) to create a RAID 0, and everything went fine.

It seems to be a driver problem... but I can't find them!
I'd like also to find a solution that allows me to not to use a floppy disk.

Thank you

 

[rclarke250]

look here

http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-43205

my understanding is that IBM only supports enterprise versions of SUSE and Redhat, anything else you are on your own.

 

[Biffoz]

Thank you, I think you're right!

I don't own an "enterprise" license (and I don't want to buy one)... are there any other linux solutions? To me, it seems crazy that debian isn't supported. Maybe IBM (or some crazy guy) has released a unofficial drivers package?

Otherwise I will try again with Win NT (using a floppy disk image downloaded from internet - I wonder which one) but that solution (win + floppy disk) is exactly what I was trying to avoid.

 

[LarryTheCucumber]

What drive controller are you using? Maybe a ServeRAID 3 or 4?
If that is the case you need to create the arrays first, using the ServeRAID configurator.

 

[Biffoz]

I think I'm using a ServerRAID II

As I've written in my first post I've already used serveRAID configurator in order to create the arrays (everything went fine, I've now a RAID 0).