Fails to recognise drives on DAC 960 Raid controller

[PearZoo]

The DAC960 module loads fine during install from CD-ROM. Installation completes without error. However all subsequent boots fail with the following error:

ALERT! /dev/rd/cNdNpN does not exist. Dropping to shell!

(Where N is numercial and will differ according to installation)

It seems that that the DAC960 module is not loaded.

Although version 2.6.10 installs and works correctly with the DAC960 Raid Controller, upgrading to 2.6.12-9 and 2.6.12-10 causes the boot process to fail with the same error.

Upgrading from Warty to Breezy and booting using the old Warty Kernel is the only way I can get Breezy to boot on this Raid Controlled server.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

This would be an initramfs or udev issue. Can you try loading the module manually at the shell?

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

This bug has been waiting for a response from the reporter for over two months. Please respond, or we cannot help.

[Stian Jordet (stian-web)]

It's obviously to late for Dapper, but I got myself a shiny old server yesterday, with a Mylex DAC1100. I get the excactly same error on the first boot after a sucessfull install. I'll try to load the module from the shell when I get home from work.

[ubu (spam-assassin)]

I have the same problem. This bug was also reported by a Debian user and it seems that is already fixed in that distro:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=355162
There is something that I can try to do to fix this bug on myself?

[ubu (spam-assassin)]

The solution is:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=82466

[Steph Vince (stephane-vince)]

Indeed, the solution of vjshah from the previous post, is nearly working with Ubuntu LTS 6.06 (Dapper Drake)
There is just some littles differences in the file naming and a stupid issue with grub.

For those who read this thread, here is a corrected version for ubuntu 6.06 of the fixe provided by vjshah :

1. Use your install CD to boot into rescue mode (insert CD and choose "rescue" in the menu).

2. mkdir /target; mount /dev/rd/c0d0p1 /target (or whatever is your root partition. NB I did not have to provide any options. I did not have my partition map handy so I just mounted every partition on an empty dir and viewed the contents to figure out what was in each partition.)

3. If you use several partition, recreate the required tree under /target. You absoloudly need /, /usr & /boot.

4. chroot /target /bin/bash (now it looks like you are in your installation and we switch to bash command line).

5. add DAC960 in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules (nano /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add "DAC960" as the last line).

5. /usr/sbin/mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img /lib/modules/2.6.XX-X-686/ (use the TAB to do autocompete or know your kernel version).

6. Cd to /boot and verify that you are happy (I just ensured the new img was larger than the old one). Then backup the old img and rename the new img to the same name as the old img (initrd.img-2.6.XX-X-686 for exemple).

7. Edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and replace the dirty '!' by a the good '/' character (i don't know why, but the installer seems to use a wrong caracter to refer to partition). Use nano /boot/grub/menu.lst and correct the 2 kernel's lines (at the end of the file) : replace "root=/dev/rd!c0d0p3" by "root=/dev/rd/c0d0p3"

8. Reboot. Everything went smoothly, for me, after that.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Debian's initramfs-tools 0.54 fixed this, thus this is solved in Edgy and later.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Debian changelog:

   * hook-functions: Add dac960 scsi driver. (closes: #355162)

This looks like a safe and effective target for the dapper point release.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This fix isn't in the currently uploaded initramfs-tools.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Accepted into dapper-proposed:

 initramfs-tools (0.40ubuntu34) dapper-proposed; urgency=low
 .
   * Added DAC960 to auto scsi modules
     - LP: #31035

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

The DAC960 module is in the initramfs on the 6.06.2 candidate now. Based on that and the tested instructions in comment 6 I consider this verified.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Copied to dapper-updates.