Bizzare SCSI mount errors

[worley at ariadne.com (Dale R. Worley)]

    CN> "The kernel does not recognize /dev/sdan as a block device",
    CN> where n = the scsi device number.  I've run the utility
    CN> /dev/MAKEDEV sda and I still can't mount any SCSI device. 
    CN> I've been running the same kernel for about 3 months.

There could be two problems:  (1) The /dev/sda<n> directory entry does
not map to the right major/minor pair (with the 'b' flag).  Look at
the directory entry and compare with the listing in
Documentation/devices.txt.

   When you look in the /dev tree with "ls -l sd*" is the 'b' flag showing?  Are
   the major and minor numbers correct?  Have you tried doing this manually with
   the "mknod" command instead of the "MAKEDEV" script?

The other possibility is that the disk isn't being recognized
correctly.  Check your syslog -- when the kernel recognizes the SCSI
controller and polls all the devices to see what they are, it logs
messages telling what disks and partitions it sees.  For instance, on
my system:

Feb  3 09:14:02 ant kernel: scsi0 : Adaptec 152x SCSI driver; $Revision: 1.18 $
Feb  3 09:14:02 ant kernel: scsi : 1 host.
Feb  3 09:14:02 ant kernel:   Vendor: HP        Model: C2247-300         Rev: 0BA4
Feb  3 09:14:02 ant kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Feb  3 09:14:09 ant kernel: Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0
Feb  3 09:14:09 ant kernel: SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 2054864 [1003 MB] [1.0 GB]
Feb  3 09:14:09 ant kernel:  sda: sda1 sda2

Note that the SCSI disk numbers (sda, sdb, sdc, etc.) are assigned
dynamically as the disks are seen by the kernel, and so if you
reconfigure your hardware, you can discover all your disks have new
names!

Dale
--
Dale R. Worley					Ariadne Internet Services
Voice: +1 617-899-7949   Fax: +1 617-899-7946	E-mail: worley at ariadne.com
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