Bug#319340: grub: fails on Adaptec I2O RAID

[Raoul Borenius]

Package: grub
Version: 0.95+cvs20040624-17
Severity: normal


Apparently grub does not work on our Dual-Xeon Servers from Supermicro
These are equipped with I20-RAID-Controllers from Adaptec:

root at b1:~# cat /proc/scsi/dpt_i2o/0 
Adaptec I2O RAID Driver Version: 2.4 Build 5go

Vendor: Adaptec  Model: 2005S            FW:380E

It 'hangs' with:

  -------------------------------------
  Booting 'Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.8-2-686-smp '

root  (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-686-smp root=/dev/sda1 ro console=ttyS0,57600
   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x12b71c]
initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-2-686-smp
   [Linux-initrd @ 0x37b4b000, 0x4a4000 bytes]
savedefault
boot
  -------------------------------------

IT makes no difference if the boot-disk is part of a hardware-RAID-set
or is used as a plain disk from linux.

Lilo works, but we have to use the 'compact' option. Without that
lilo needs about 15 min to load kernel and initrd. But in the end
it manages to boot. Grub seems to be stuck forever (have not waited
longer than two hours ;-)

So there seems to be a general problem with booting on this kind of controller,
but at least with lilo there is a reasonable workaround. Would be nice to have
that for grub also. As I understand grub has superior features over lilo so
it would be nice to switch to grub on all our boxes.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-686-smp
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages grub depends on:
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libncurses5                 5.4-4        Shared libraries for terminal hand

-- no debconf information