| AIC7xxx Driver for Linux |
| |
| Introduction |
| ---------------------------- |
| The AIC7xxx SCSI driver adds support for Adaptec (http://www.adaptec.com) |
| SCSI controllers and chipsets. Major portions of the driver and driver |
| development are shared between both Linux and FreeBSD. Support for the |
| AIC-7xxx chipsets have been in the default Linux kernel since approximately |
| linux-1.1.x and fairly stable since linux-1.2.x, and are also in FreeBSD |
| 2.1.0 or later. |
| |
| Supported cards/chipsets |
| ---------------------------- |
| Adaptec Cards |
| ---------------------------- |
| AHA-274x |
| AHA-274xT |
| AHA-2842 |
| AHA-2910B |
| AHA-2920C |
| AHA-2930 |
| AHA-2930U |
| AHA-2930CU |
| AHA-2930U2 |
| AHA-2940 |
| AHA-2940W |
| AHA-2940U |
| AHA-2940UW |
| AHA-2940UW-PRO |
| AHA-2940AU |
| AHA-2940U2W |
| AHA-2940U2 |
| AHA-2940U2B |
| AHA-2940U2BOEM |
| AHA-2944D |
| AHA-2944WD |
| AHA-2944UD |
| AHA-2944UWD |
| AHA-2950U2 |
| AHA-2950U2W |
| AHA-2950U2B |
| AHA-29160M |
| AHA-3940 |
| AHA-3940U |
| AHA-3940W |
| AHA-3940UW |
| AHA-3940AUW |
| AHA-3940U2W |
| AHA-3950U2B |
| AHA-3950U2D |
| AHA-3960D |
| AHA-39160M |
| AHA-3985 |
| AHA-3985U |
| AHA-3985W |
| AHA-3985UW |
| |
| Motherboard Chipsets |
| ---------------------------- |
| AIC-777x |
| AIC-785x |
| AIC-786x |
| AIC-787x |
| AIC-788x |
| AIC-789x |
| AIC-3860 |
| |
| Bus Types |
| ---------------------------- |
| W - Wide SCSI, SCSI-3, 16bit bus, 68pin connector, will also support |
| SCSI-1/SCSI-2 50pin devices, transfer rates up to 20MB/s. |
| U - Ultra SCSI, transfer rates up to 40MB/s. |
| U2- Ultra 2 SCSI, transfer rates up to 80MB/s. |
| D - Differential SCSI. |
| T - Twin Channel SCSI. Up to 14 SCSI devices. |
| |
| AHA-274x - EISA SCSI controller |
| AHA-284x - VLB SCSI controller |
| AHA-29xx - PCI SCSI controller |
| AHA-394x - PCI controllers with two separate SCSI controllers on-board. |
| AHA-398x - PCI RAID controllers with three separate SCSI controllers |
| on-board. |
| |
| Not Supported Devices |
| ------------------------------ |
| Adaptec Cards |
| ---------------------------- |
| AHA-2920 (Only the cards that use the Future Domain chipset are not |
| supported, any 2920 cards based on Adaptec AIC chipsets, |
| such as the 2920C, are supported) |
| AAA-13x Raid Adapters |
| AAA-113x Raid Port Card |
| |
| Motherboard Chipsets |
| ---------------------------- |
| AIC-7810 |
| |
| Bus Types |
| ---------------------------- |
| R - Raid Port busses are not supported. |
| |
| The hardware RAID devices sold by Adaptec are *NOT* supported by this |
| driver (and will people please stop emailing me about them, they are |
| a totally separate beast from the bare SCSI controllers and this driver |
| cannot be retrofitted in any sane manner to support the hardware RAID |
| features on those cards - Doug Ledford). |
| |
| |
| People |
| ------------------------------ |
| Justin T Gibbs gibbs@plutotech.com |
| (BSD Driver Author) |
| Dan Eischen deischen@iworks.InterWorks.org |
| (Original Linux Driver Co-maintainer) |
| Dean Gehnert deang@teleport.com |
| (Original Linux FTP/patch maintainer) |
| Jess Johnson jester@frenzy.com |
| (AIC7xxx FAQ author) |
| Doug Ledford dledford@redhat.com |
| (Current Linux aic7xxx-5.x.x Driver/Patch/FTP maintainer) |
| |
| Special thanks go to John Aycock (aycock@cpsc.ucalgary.ca), the original |
| author of the driver. John has since retired from the project. Thanks |
| again for all his work! |
| |
| Mailing list |
| ------------------------------ |
| There is a mailing list available for users who want to track development |
| and converse with other users and developers. This list is for both |
| FreeBSD and Linux support of the AIC7xxx chipsets. |
| |
| To subscribe to the AIC7xxx mailing list send mail to the list server, |
| with "subscribe AIC7xxx" in the body (no Subject: required): |
| To: majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG |
| --- |
| subscribe AIC7xxx |
| |
| To unsubscribe from the list, send mail to the list server with: |
| To: majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG |
| --- |
| unsubscribe AIC7xxx |
| |
| Send regular messages and replies to: AIC7xxx@FreeBSD.ORG |
| |
| Boot Command line options |
| ------------------------------ |
| "aic7xxx=no_reset" - Eliminate the SCSI bus reset during startup. |
| Some SCSI devices need the initial reset that this option disables |
| in order to work. If you have problems at bootup, please make sure |
| you aren't using this option. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=reverse_scan" - Certain PCI motherboards scan for devices at |
| bootup by scanning from the highest numbered PCI device to the |
| lowest numbered PCI device, others do just the opposite and scan |
| from lowest to highest numbered PCI device. There is no reliable |
| way to autodetect this ordering. So, we default to the most common |
| order, which is lowest to highest. Then, in case your motherboard |
| scans from highest to lowest, we have this option. If your BIOS |
| finds the drives on controller A before controller B but the linux |
| kernel finds your drives on controller B before A, then you should |
| use this option. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=extended" - Force the driver to detect extended drive translation |
| on your controller. This helps those people who have cards without |
| a SEEPROM make sure that linux and all other operating systems think |
| the same way about your hard drives. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=scbram" - Some cards have external SCB RAM that can be used to |
| give the card more hardware SCB slots. This allows the driver to use |
| that SCB RAM. Without this option, the driver won't touch the SCB |
| RAM because it is known to cause problems on a few cards out there |
| (such as 3985 class cards). |
| |
| "aic7xxx=irq_trigger:x" - Replace x with either 0 or 1 to force the kernel |
| to use the correct IRQ type for your card. This only applies to EISA |
| based controllers. On these controllers, 0 is for Edge triggered |
| interrupts, and 1 is for Level triggered interrupts. If you aren't |
| sure or don't know which IRQ trigger type your EISA card uses, then |
| let the kernel autodetect the trigger type. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=verbose" - This option can be used in one of two ways. If you |
| simply specify aic7xxx=verbose, then the kernel will automatically |
| pick the default set of verbose messages for you to see. |
| Alternatively, you can specify the command as |
| "aic7xxx=verbose:0xXXXX" where the X entries are replaced with |
| hexadecimal digits. This option is a bit field type option. For |
| a full listing of the available options, search for the |
| #define VERBOSE_xxxxxx lines in the aic7xxx.c file. If you want |
| verbose messages, then it is recommended that you simply use the |
| aic7xxx=verbose variant of this command. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=pci_parity:x" - This option controls whether or not the driver |
| enables PCI parity error checking on the PCI bus. By default, this |
| checking is disabled. To enable the checks, simply specify pci_parity |
| with no value afterwords. To reverse the parity from even to odd, |
| supply any number other than 0 or 255. In short: |
| pci_parity - Even parity checking (even is the normal PCI parity) |
| pci_parity:x - Where x > 0, Odd parity checking |
| pci_parity:0 - No check (default) |
| NOTE: In order to get Even PCI parity checking, you must use the |
| version of the option that does not include the : and a number at |
| the end (unless you want to enter exactly 2^32 - 1 as the number). |
| |
| "aic7xxx=no_probe" - This option will disable the probing for any VLB |
| based 2842 controllers and any EISA based controllers. This is |
| needed on certain newer motherboards where the normal EISA I/O ranges |
| have been claimed by other PCI devices. Probing on those machines |
| will often result in the machine crashing or spontaneously rebooting |
| during startup. Examples of machines that need this are the |
| Dell PowerEdge 6300 machines. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=seltime:2" - This option controls how long the card waits |
| during a device selection sequence for the device to respond. |
| The original SCSI spec says that this "should be" 256ms. This |
| is generally not required with modern devices. However, some |
| very old SCSI I devices need the full 256ms. Most modern devices |
| can run fine with only 64ms. The default for this option is |
| 64ms. If you need to change this option, then use the following |
| table to set the proper value in the example above: |
| 0 - 256ms |
| 1 - 128ms |
| 2 - 64ms |
| 3 - 32ms |
| |
| "aic7xxx=panic_on_abort" - This option is for debugging and will cause |
| the driver to panic the linux kernel and freeze the system the first |
| time the drivers abort or reset routines are called. This is most |
| helpful when some problem causes infinite reset loops that scroll too |
| fast to see. By using this option, you can write down what the errors |
| actually are and send that information to me so it can be fixed. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=dump_card" - This option will print out the *entire* set of |
| configuration registers on the card during the init sequence. This |
| is a debugging aid used to see exactly what state the card is in |
| when we finally finish our initialization routines. If you don't |
| have documentation on the chipsets, this will do you absolutely |
| no good unless you are simply trying to write all the information |
| down in order to send it to me. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=dump_sequencer" - This is the same as the above options except |
| that instead of dumping the register contents on the card, this |
| option dumps the contents of the sequencer program RAM. This gives |
| the ability to verify that the instructions downloaded to the |
| card's sequencer are indeed what they are supposed to be. Again, |
| unless you have documentation to tell you how to interpret these |
| numbers, then it is totally useless. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=override_term:0xffffffff" - This option is used to force the |
| termination on your SCSI controllers to a particular setting. This |
| is a bit mask variable that applies for up to 8 aic7xxx SCSI channels. |
| Each channel gets 4 bits, divided as follows: |
| bit 3 2 1 0 |
| | | | Enable/Disable Single Ended Low Byte Termination |
| | | En/Disable Single Ended High Byte Termination |
| | En/Disable Low Byte LVD Termination |
| En/Disable High Byte LVD Termination |
| |
| The upper 2 bits that deal with LVD termination only apply to Ultra2 |
| controllers. Futhermore, due to the current Ultra2 controller |
| designs, these bits are tied together such that setting either bit |
| enables both low and high byte LVD termination. It is not possible |
| to only set high or low byte LVD termination in this manner. This is |
| an artifact of the BIOS definition on Ultra2 controllers. For other |
| controllers, the only important bits are the two lowest bits. Setting |
| the higher bits on non-Ultra2 controllers has no effect. A few |
| examples of how to use this option: |
| |
| Enable low and high byte termination on a non-ultra2 controller that |
| is the first aic7xxx controller (the correct bits are 0011), |
| aic7xxx=override_term:0x3 |
| |
| Enable all termination on the third aic7xxx controller, high byte |
| termination on the second aic7xxx controller, and low and high byte |
| SE termination on the first aic7xxx controller |
| (bits are 1111 0010 0011), |
| aic7xxx=override_term:0xf23 |
| |
| No attempt has been made to make this option non-cryptic. It really |
| shouldn't be used except in dire circumstances, and if that happens, |
| I'm probably going to be telling you what to set this to anyway :) |
| |
| "aic7xxx=stpwlev:0xffffffff" - This option is used to control the STPWLEV |
| bit in the DEVCONFIG PCI register. Currently, this is one of the |
| very few registers that we have absolutely *no* way of detecting |
| what the variable should be. It depends entirely on how the chipset |
| and external terminators were coupled by the card/motherboard maker. |
| Further, a chip reset (at power up) always sets this bit to 0. If |
| there is no BIOS to run on the chipset/card (such as with a 2910C |
| or a motherboard controller with the BIOS totally disabled) then |
| the variable may not get set properly. Of course, if the proper |
| setting was 0, then that's what it would be after the reset, but if |
| the proper setting is actually 1.....you get the picture. Now, since |
| we can't detect this at all, I've added this option to force the |
| setting. If you have a BIOS on your controller then you should never |
| need to use this option. However, if you are having lots of SCSI |
| reset problems and can't seem to get them knocked out, this may help. |
| |
| Here's a test to know for certain if you need this option. Make |
| a boot floppy that you can use to boot your computer up and that |
| will detect the aic7xxx controller. Next, power down your computer. |
| While it's down, unplug all SCSI cables from your Adaptec SCSI |
| controller. Boot the system back up to the Adaptec EZ-SCSI BIOS |
| and then make sure that termination is enabled on your adapter (if |
| you have an Adaptec BIOS of course). Next, boot up the floppy you |
| made and wait for it to detect the aic7xxx controller. If the kernel |
| finds the controller fine, says scsi : x hosts and then tries to |
| detect your devices like normal, up to the point where it fails to |
| mount your root file system and panics, then you're fine. If, on |
| the other hand, the system goes into an infinite reset loop, then |
| you need to use this option and/or the previous option to force the |
| proper termination settings on your controller. If this happens, |
| then you next need to figure out what your settings should be. |
| |
| To find the correct settings, power your machine back down, connect |
| back up the SCSI cables, and boot back into your machine like normal. |
| However, boot with the aic7xxx=verbose:0x39 option. Record the |
| initial DEVCONFIG values for each of your aic7xxx controllers as |
| they are listed, and also record what the machine is detecting as |
| the proper termination on your controllers. NOTE: the order in |
| which the initial DEVCONFIG values are printed out is not guaranteed |
| to be the same order as the SCSI controllers are registered. The |
| above option and this option both work on the order of the SCSI |
| controllers as they are registered, so make sure you match the right |
| DEVCONFIG values with the right controllers if you have more than |
| one aic7xxx controller. |
| |
| Once you have the detected termination settings and the initial |
| DEVCONFIG values for each controller, then figure out what the |
| termination on each of the controllers *should* be. Hopefully, that |
| part is correct, but it could possibly be wrong if there is |
| bogus cable detection logic on your controller or something similar. |
| If all the controllers have the correct termination settings, then |
| don't set the aic7xxx=override_term variable at all, leave it alone. |
| Next, on any controllers that go into an infinite reset loop when |
| you unplug all the SCSI cables, get the starting DEVCONFIG value. |
| If the initial DEVCONFIG value is divisible by 2, then the correct |
| setting for that controller is 0. If it's an odd number, then |
| the correct setting for that controller is 1. For any other |
| controllers that didn't have an infinite reset problem, then reverse |
| the above options. If DEVCONFIG was even, then the correct setting |
| is 1, if not then the correct setting is 0. |
| |
| Now that you know what the correct setting was for each controller, |
| we need to encode that into the aic7xxx=stpwlev:0x... variable. |
| This variable is a bit field encoded variable. Bit 0 is for the first |
| aic7xxx controller, bit 1 for the next, etc. Put all these bits |
| together and you get a number. For example, if the third aic7xxx |
| needed a 1, but the second and first both needed a 0, then the bits |
| would be 100 in binary. This then translates to 0x04. You would |
| therefore set aic7xxx=stpwlev:0x04. This is fairly standard binary |
| to hexadecimal conversions here. If you aren't up to speed on the |
| binary->hex conversion then send an email to the aic7xxx mailing |
| list and someone can help you out. |
| |
| "aic7xxx=tag_info:{{8,8..},{8,8..},..}" - This option is used to disable |
| or enable Tagged Command Queueing (TCQ) on specific devices. As of |
| driver version 5.1.11, TCQ is now either on or off by default |
| according to the setting you choose during the make config process. |
| In order to en/disable TCQ for certian devices at boot time, a user |
| may use this boot param. The driver will then parse this message out |
| and en/disable the specific device entries that are present based upon |
| the value given. The param line is parsed in the following manner: |
| |
| { - first instance indicates the start of this parameter values |
| second instance is the start of entries for a particular |
| device entry |
| } - end the entries for a particular host adapter, or end the entire |
| set of parameter entries |
| , - move to next entry. Inside of a set of device entries, this |
| moves us to the next device on the list. Outside of device |
| entries, this moves us to the next host adapter |
| . - Same effect as , but is safe to use with insmod. |
| x - the number to enter into the array at this position. |
| 0 = Enable tagged queueing on this device and use the default |
| queue depth |
| 1-254 = Enable tagged queueing on this device and use this |
| number as the queue depth |
| 255 = Disable tagged queueing on this device. |
| Note: anything above 32 for an actual queue depth is wasteful |
| and not recommended. |
| |
| A few examples of how this can be used: |
| |
| tag_info:{{8,12,,0,,255,4}} |
| This line will only effect the first aic7xxx card registered. It |
| will set scsi id 0 to a queue depth of 8, id 1 to 12, leave id 2 |
| at the default, set id 3 to tagged queueing enabled and use the |
| default queue depth, id 4 default, id 5 disabled, and id 6 to 4. |
| Any not specified entries stay at the default value, repeated |
| commas with no value specified will simply increment to the next id |
| without changing anything for the missing values. |
| |
| tag_info:{,,,{,,,255}} |
| First, second, and third adapters at default values. Fourth |
| adapter, id 3 is disabled. Notice that leading commas simply |
| increment what the first number effects, and there are no need |
| for trailing commas. When you close out an adapter, or the |
| entire entry, anything not explicitly set stays at the default |
| value. |
| |
| A final note on this option. The scanner I used for this isn't |
| perfect or highly robust. If you mess the line up, the worst that |
| should happen is that the line will get ignored. If you don't |
| close out the entire entry with the final bracket, then any other |
| aic7xxx options after this will get ignored. So, in general, be |
| sure of what you are entering, and after you have it right, just |
| add it to the lilo.conf file so there won't be any mistakes. As |
| a means of checking this parser, the entire tag_info array for |
| each card is now printed out in the /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/x file. You |
| can use that to verify that your options were parsed correctly. |
| |
| Boot command line options may be combined to form the proper set of options |
| a user might need. For example, the following is valid: |
| |
| aic7xxx=verbose,extended,irq_trigger:1 |
| |
| The only requirement is that individual options be separated by a comma or |
| a period on the command line. |
| |
| Module Loading command options |
| ------------------------------ |
| When loading the aic7xxx driver as a module, the exact same options are |
| available to the user. However, the syntax to specify the options changes |
| slightly. For insmod, you need to wrap the aic7xxx= argument in quotes |
| and replace all ',' with '.'. So, for example, a valid insmod line |
| would be: |
| |
| insmod aic7xxx aic7xxx='verbose.irq_trigger:1.extended' |
| |
| This line should result in the *exact* same behaviour as if you typed |
| it in at the lilo prompt and the driver was compiled into the kernel |
| instead of being a module. The reason for the single quote is so that |
| the shell won't try to interpret anything in the line, such as {. |
| Insmod assumes any options starting with a letter instead of a number |
| is a character string (which is what we want) and by switching all of |
| the commas to periods, insmod won't interpret this as more than one |
| string and write junk into our binary image. I consider it a bug in |
| the insmod program that even if you wrap your string in quotes (quotes |
| that pass the shell mind you and that insmod sees) it still treates |
| a comma inside of those quotes as starting a new variable, resulting |
| in memory scribbles if you don't switch the commas to periods. |
| |
| |
| Kernel Compile options |
| ------------------------------ |
| The various kernel compile time options for this driver are now fairly |
| well documented in the file Documentation/Configure.help. In order to |
| see this documentation, you need to use one of the advanced configuration |
| programs (menuconfig and xconfig). If you are using the "make menuconfig" |
| method of configuring your kernel, then you would simply highlight the |
| option in question and hit the ? key. If you are using the "make xconfig" |
| method of configuring your kernel, then simply click on the help button |
| next to the option you have questions about. The help information from |
| the Configure.help file will then get automatically displayed. |
| |
| /proc support |
| ------------------------------ |
| The /proc support for the AIC7xxx can be found in the /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/ |
| directory. That directory contains a file for each SCSI controller in |
| the system. Each file presents the current configuration and transfer |
| statistics (enabled with #define in aic7xxx.c) for each controller. |
| |
| Thanks to Michael Neuffer for his upper-level SCSI help, and |
| Matthew Jacob for statistics support. |
| |
| Debugging the driver |
| ------------------------------ |
| Should you have problems with this driver, and would like some help in |
| getting them solved, there are a couple debugging items built into |
| the driver to facilitate getting the needed information from the system. |
| In general, I need a complete description of the problem, with as many |
| logs as possible concerning what happens. To help with this, there is |
| a command option aic7xxx=panic_on_abort. This option, when set, forces |
| the driver to panic the kernel on the first SCSI abort issued by the |
| mid level SCSI code. If your system is going to reset loops and you |
| can't read the screen, then this is what you need. Not only will it |
| stop the system, but it also prints out a large amount of state |
| information in the process. Second, if you specify the option |
| "aic7xxx=verbose:0x1ffff", the system will print out *SOOOO* much |
| information as it runs that you won't be able to see anything. |
| However, this can actually be very useful if your machine simply |
| locks up when trying to boot, since it will pin-point what was last |
| happening (in regards to the aic7xxx driver) immediately prior to |
| the lockup. This is really only useful if your machine simply can |
| not boot up successfully. If you can get your machine to run, then |
| this will produce far too much information. |
| |
| FTP sites |
| ------------------------------ |
| ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/aic/ |
| - Out of date. I used to keep stuff here, but too many people |
| complained about having a hard time getting into Red Hat's ftp |
| server. So use the web site below instead. |
| ftp://ftp.pcnet.com/users/eischen/Linux/ |
| - Dan Eischen's driver distribution area |
| ftp://ekf2.vsb.cz/pub/linux/kernel/aic7xxx/ftp.teleport.com/ |
| - European Linux mirror of Teleport site |
| |
| Web sites |
| ------------------------------ |
| http://people.redhat.com/dledford/ |
| - My web site, also the primary aic7xxx site with several related |
| pages. |
| |
| Dean W. Gehnert |
| deang@teleport.com |
| |
| $Revision: 3.0 $ |
| |
| Modified by Doug Ledford 1998-2000 |
| |
