LiveCD boot options

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: LiveCD boot options
started by: knorth

Posted by knorth on Mar. 27 2007,22:16

My Poweredge 6300 hangs when booting from LiveCD. I've searched here on the DSL forums and web-wide on google, and found that I need to pass the "aic7xxx=no_probe" option at boot time.

How can I do this from a LiveCD?

As background info, I've already remastered my own CD with several /mydsl/*.dsl extensions and other modifications, including modifications to isolinux.cfg and .fluxbox/menu, etc.

Can I accomplish this with more mod's to isolinux.cfg? If not, then which files contain the boot options for module loading?

Thanks for any/all help !!!

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Mar. 27 2007,22:51

if it's a boot time option, you can add it to the other options in isolinux.cfg
or type it in manually during boot

Posted by knorth on Mar. 28 2007,02:38

That's the problem. I've tried adding the "aic7xxx=no_probe" option manually during boot, but it seems to be ignored.

This reminds me of another problem I encountered a while back with another system. I always needed to do a "modprobe 3c509" after the system was up and running. I could never find a way to load the 3c509 module via the command line at boot time.

So I guess my question is actually, "Is there a generalized scheme/mechanism to allow loading/customizing individual module behavior from the DSL command line?" If so, where is it documented. I've had no luck finding it so far.

Thanks again.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Mar. 28 2007,05:35

There's automatic module loading via [mydsl]/module since 3.2 afaik.
You can also add commands to /opt/bootlocal.sh

If you need it during the initrd, you can add the module in minirt24.gz (if it doesn't already exist) and modify linuxrc as needed.

Is "aic7xxx" some sort of scsi module? It might be easier to boot with noscsi, then load whichever modules you want manually.

Posted by knorth on Mar. 28 2007,12:21

Now we're getting somewhere . . .

Sorry. I guess I didn't state my problem very well.

The Poweredge system I'm using has multiple on-board SCSI controllers. All of them are Adaptec, and use the aic7xxx module. The CD-ROM that I'm booting from ( as LiveCD ) is connected to an AIC7860 ( secondary SCSI ) . There are other disks that I'd like to use connected to an AIC7890 ( primary SCSI channels A and B ).

If I disconnect all devices from both channels on the AIC7890, the system boots from the CD-ROM on AIC7860 and finds all 4 Xeon processors and all 4 Gb of RAM.

If I connect any disk(s) to either channel of the AIC7890, then DSL will boot from CD, but will hang whil probing hardware. Googl'ing on this has led to several mentions that on this system's chipset, the aic7xx needs the "no_probe" option.

I just want to find out how to accomplish this in DSL, since I really like this tiny OS.

I'l try breaking into minirt24 and tweaking linuxrc, but any other input will be appreciated.