Adaptec 29160N SCSI card with Ubuntu: aic7xxx driver

I have ordered an Adaptec 29160N scsi card that I plan to used with a
tape drive under Ubuntu.

At the Adaptec site, I found source code for a driver called aic7xxx. I
don't know how to compile the code: `make` and `make all` don't work.
The Makefile and READMEs say nothing about how to build the driver.

Maybe I don't have to: is this driver already built in to the kernel?

Or is it somehow present in the Ubuntu distro so I can add it easily?

On Sun, 04 May 2008 07:16:05 +0000, Matt wrote:

> I have ordered an Adaptec 29160N scsi card that I plan to used with a
> tape drive under Ubuntu.

The driver has been present in Linux for many years. I had Ubuntu 8.04
installed on a SCSI drive driven by that HBA for a few hours before I
wiped it and installed Slackware.

Dave Uhring wrote:
> On Sun, 04 May 2008 07:16:05 +0000, Matt wrote:
>
>> I have ordered an Adaptec 29160N scsi card that I plan to used with a
>> tape drive under Ubuntu.
>
> The driver has been present in Linux for many years. I had Ubuntu 8.04
> installed on a SCSI drive driven by that HBA for a few hours before I
> wiped it and installed Slackware.


Thanks. So it is built into kernels for all the popular distros
somehow? You can see I'm not much of a kernel hacker.

How would somebody be able to know that other than by asking somebody?
I thought maybe lsmod would tell, but `lsmod` doesn't mention aic7xxx.

What made me think it wasn't built in was
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support...60/ASC-29160N/ and similar
pages, where you can download some old RPMs for Red Hat and Suse. The
newest RPMs are from August 2004. The oldest driver source-code
downloads for kernels are from 2005. Does this means that the driver
was earlier built as a module and later integrated into the kernel?

At Sun, 04 May 2008 07:16:05 GMT Matt <matt@themattfella.xxxyyz.com> wrote:

>
> I have ordered an Adaptec 29160N scsi card that I plan to used with a
> tape drive under Ubuntu.
>
> At the Adaptec site, I found source code for a driver called aic7xxx. I
> don't know how to compile the code: `make` and `make all` don't work.
> The Makefile and READMEs say nothing about how to build the driver.
>
> Maybe I don't have to: is this driver already built in to the kernel?

Yes, and has been for years.

>
> Or is it somehow present in the Ubuntu distro so I can add it easily?

It will happen automagically when your system detects the card.

>

--
Robert Heller -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar!
Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database
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At Sun, 04 May 2008 09:55:33 GMT Matt <matt@themattfella.xxxyyz.com> wrote:

>
> Dave Uhring wrote:
> > On Sun, 04 May 2008 07:16:05 +0000, Matt wrote:
> >
> >> I have ordered an Adaptec 29160N scsi card that I plan to used with a
> >> tape drive under Ubuntu.
> >
> > The driver has been present in Linux for many years. I had Ubuntu 8.04
> > installed on a SCSI drive driven by that HBA for a few hours before I
> > wiped it and installed Slackware.
>
>
> Thanks. So it is built into kernels for all the popular distros
> somehow? You can see I'm not much of a kernel hacker.
>
> How would somebody be able to know that other than by asking somebody?
> I thought maybe lsmod would tell, but `lsmod` doesn't mention aic7xxx.

lsmod old tells you about loaded modules -- the module won't be loaded
until the system detects and configures the card.

>
> What made me think it wasn't built in was
> http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support...60/ASC-29160N/ and similar
> pages, where you can download some old RPMs for Red Hat and Suse. The
> newest RPMs are from August 2004. The oldest driver source-code
> downloads for kernels are from 2005. Does this means that the driver
> was earlier built as a module and later integrated into the kernel?

It has been a module, shipped with the kernel, since kernel version 2.0
(if not earlier). This is an 'older' and well supported driver that has
been part of stock linux kernels (generally as a module) for some time.
Adaptec has been a long time 'supporter' of Linux and generally has
been very cooperative with Linux kernel driver writers -- Adaptec SCSI
cards are amoungst the best supported cards for Linux systems. The
driver generally ships with virtually all distros as a pre-built
module. Yes one can integrate it into the kernel, but there is
generally no point in bothering on modern desktop and server machines.
One only needs it integrated in the case of a situation where it is
needed at boot time (before the root file system is mounted) AND an
init ramdisk is not an option. Realisticly, this would mean some sort
of embedded system such as some sort of SBC-based system or some other
special hardware environment, which is an unlikely place for a PCI SCSI
card, although maybe some kind of smart dedicated RAID controller
system might do this.

You should be able to just install the card in your box and the system
will detect it and configure it the next time the system boots up. In
fact, the system will detect and configure the tape drive as well --
SCSI tape drives are pretty standardized.

>

--
Robert Heller -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar!
Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database
heller@deepsoft.com -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk

On Sun, 04 May 2008 09:55:33 +0000, Matt wrote:
> Dave Uhring wrote:

>> The driver has been present in Linux for many years. I had Ubuntu 8.04
>> installed on a SCSI drive driven by that HBA for a few hours before I
>> wiped it and installed Slackware.

> How would somebody be able to know that other than by asking somebody?
> I thought maybe lsmod would tell, but `lsmod` doesn't mention aic7xxx.

You can reasonably assume that any OS has drivers for the 29160N. I have
run several Linux distros, several versions of Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
and NetBSD on systems using the 29160N.

> What made me think it wasn't built in was
> http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support...60/ASC-29160N/ and similar
> pages, where you can download some old RPMs for Red Hat and Suse. The
> newest RPMs are from August 2004. The oldest driver source-code
> downloads for kernels are from 2005.

I'm fairly sure the 29160N was supported in all those OSs long before
those dates.

> Does this means that the driver
> was earlier built as a module and later integrated into the kernel?

You can build a kernel both ways. Slackware has the driver built into the
kernel rather than as a module. Fromt the kernel config file:

CONFIG_SCSI_AIC7XXX=y
CONFIG_AIC7XXX_CMDS_PER_DEVICE=4
CONFIG_AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY_MS=15000
# CONFIG_AIC7XXX_DEBUG_ENABLE is not set
CONFIG_AIC7XXX_DEBUG_MASK=0
# CONFIG_AIC7XXX_REG_PRETTY_PRINT is not set
CONFIG_SCSI_AIC7XXX_OLD=m
CONFIG_SCSI_AIC79XX=y
CONFIG_AIC79XX_CMDS_PER_DEVICE=4
CONFIG_AIC79XX_RESET_DELAY_MS=15000
# CONFIG_AIC79XX_DEBUG_ENABLE is not set
CONFIG_AIC79XX_DEBUG_MASK=0
# CONFIG_AIC79XX_REG_PRETTY_PRINT is not set
CONFIG_SCSI_AIC94XX=y
# CONFIG_AIC94XX_DEBUG is not set

And from /var/log/messages:

Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: scsi2 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 7.0
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access IBM-ESXS DTN036W3UWDY10FN S27M PQ: 0 ANSI: 3
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:0: Beginning Domain Validation
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:0: wide asynchronous
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:0: FAST-80 WIDE SCSI 160.0 MB/s DT (12.5 ns, offset 127)
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:0: Ending Domain Validation
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: scsi 2:0:1:0: Direct-Access IBM-ESXS DTN036W3UWDY10FN S27M PQ: 0 ANSI: 3
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:1: Beginning Domain Validation
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:1: wide asynchronous
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:1: FAST-80 WIDE SCSI 160.0 MB/s DT (12.5 ns, offset 127)
Apr 30 13:56:25 maxwell kernel: target2:0:1: Ending Domain Validation

On Sun, 04 May 2008 09:55:33 +0000, Matt wrote:
<snip>
>
> What made me think it wasn't built in was
> http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support...60/ASC-29160N/ and similar
> pages, where you can download some old RPMs for Red Hat and Suse. The
> newest RPMs are from August 2004. The oldest driver source-code
> downloads for kernels are from 2005. Does this means that the driver
> was earlier built as a module and later integrated into the kernel?
>
The choice of whether a kernel element is built as a module or integrated
into the kernel itself is up to the person compiling the kernel. Red Hat
may build one driver into their kernel, whereas it is provided as a module
by others. AFAIK, it makes the most sense (based on minimizing the memory
footprint of the kernel) to provide most drivers as modules. If a driver
is not needed, it is not loaded and it doesn't take valuable physical RAM.

Of course, there is the catch-22 of trying to boot a kernel without the
necessary drivers. That problem is solved by loading an appropriate
initrd at boot. There are various howto's which explain the boot sequence
for linux. For example, the bootdisk howto. But since you are running
Slackware, studying the initrd created by mkinitrd is also a worthwhile
exercise.