[Lancaster] Observations at the folly

[Ken Hough]

Martyn Welch wrote:

> ------ Original message ------
> On Sunday 22 Aug 2004 23:22, Ken Hough wrote:
>
> >Martyn Welch wrote:
>
> >>2) The package management software on the X server is not 
> functioning all
> >>together well. I set of a "nohup rpm --rebuild" command when I was there
> >>last, I hope this will sort it. At any rate this box needs to be 
> rebuilt,
> >>preferably by getting a second harddrive and a set of drive caddies so
> >>that the current setup can be kept whilst the new one is being built and
> >>swapped over to allow for day-to-day running till the new setup is
> >>working perfectly.
>
> >Good idea!
>
> >I'm always reluctant to dump a well tried and reliable installation when
> >upgrading, so I use drive caddies on two, soon to be three of my boxes.
>
> >I discovered recently that one can obtain spare carriers rather than
> >forking out for numerous complete caddie/carrier sets. Do note that
> >units from different manufacturers are not always compatible.
>
>
> I guess we need one carrier and a pair of caddies, aluminium shell 
> ones with
> fans would be best as this machine runs 24/7 AFAIK.
>
> It's nice to know extra caddies can be obtained.
>

My carriers/caddies are made of plastic and one has a fan built in.

> >As the X server is not that new, I doubt that it handles ATA100. Should
> >we install a PCI HD controller that can handle this? Most new hard
> >drives are at least ATA100. As a server this might be worthwhile.
>
>
> I wouldn't worry to much. As long as the HD will work with what we 
> have any
> other money (if there is any...) would be far better spent increasing the
> memory from 128Mb to 512Mb or 1Gb...
>
> This is our bottleneck at the moment I think.


Makes sense!

>
> >>3) The service box should be easy to install the software for the burner
> >>on, I booted it up, however it had not properly initialised the SCSI 
> card
> >>so was forced to do it manually - this needs to be sorted. Sane should
> >>allow the scanner to be shared over the network, so we can use the
> >>generic KDE scanner client on the X-server and connect to the remote
> >>scanner. I was hoping to get thi working whilst I was there last, 
> but run
> >>out of time.
>
> >Do you mean the box that is to be the scanner/burner unit? If so, this
> >is the box that I've had at home. It now functions OK, properly
> >initialising the CD ROM, CD burner (just fitted and tested for burning)
> >and SCSI card. I hung a SCSI device on the latter to check that It's
> >presence was detected.
>
>
> Musta sorted it's self...


The SCSI card is ISA and so must be set up 'by hand', specifying the io 
and irq.
Although io ranges are marked on the card, there was no mention of irq, 
so I had
to find this by trial and error with modprobe. It turned out to be 9, so 
I've marked this on the card.

I've put the following line at the end of /etc/init.d/rc to do the job 
automatically:

'modprobe aha152x io=0x140 irq=9'

'ide-scsi' is loaded early in the boot process via 'initrd', so in this 
way, the CD drives are set up
first under scsi dev 0 and then the SCSI card under scsi dev 1 as shown 
by 'cdrecord -scanbus'

I hope to prove the flatbed scanner operation tonight.

Ken Hough