Solution for aic7xxx freeze

[saurion]

I have seen some people on this forum desperately seeking the same information as i. A hint on how to install gentoo on an scsi only aviion server (or something similar). Featuring an aic7xxx detected controler, that freezes at some point during the installation.
My situation is as follows:

Aviion (scsi only) server, PIII 500
Aic7896 ctrl, hosting one disk and one cdrom device.

I had only little succes booting from almost any gentoo bootable installation cd. But i found an experimental one that would actually boot up my system with some scsi stability.
And this is the solution i reached:

1. Get the system to boot on the cd (contact me for the right image kim@boogies.dk)

2. type "gentoo cdcache" at the boot prompt - to allow an unmount of the booting cd device.

3. Unmount the mounting cd device - so the aic7xxx driver isnt buisy anymore.

4. cd into the scsi modules dir (/lib/modules/kern.../scsi) - here you should see the aic7xxx_old module.

5. rmmod aic7xxx - removing the freezing module

6 modprobe aic7xxx_old - load a more stable module for the same functionality.

7. continue the rest of the installation as described by your installation doc.

This hopefully wont be a problem in the future. But as i said, do contact me if you need the image that i had success booting from.

Please do correct me if i missed something. This should though be less vague than the rest of the describtions and quick tips i have found so far.

Good luck to you all

Best regards
Kim