[Bug 83068] linux-image: SCSI drives inaccessible to parted or any installation tool

[glenstewart]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: linux-image-2.6-386

On an older Asus K7V server with a PCI Buslogic BT-958 SCSI card, the Ubuntu
Feisty Fawn Herd 2 Live CD's kernel fails to properly load the BusLogic
 module to enable mounting or configuration of any SCSI drives attached to
 the card.

In contrast, Mandriva 2007 Free and Knoppix 4 & 5 all work properly with the
SCSI controller and disks.

This has been a problem with both Ubuntu and Debian for the past 2 years
(Dapper, Edgy, Feisty; SID, and pre-SID unstable).  Mandriva has worked with
this card and drives since at least Mandrake 9.0.  But since moving to Ubuntu
on other boxes, I'm very eager to move this box to Ubuntu too.  SuSE's 10.x
 Live CD also fails to see these drives properly.

>From what I've been able to research, other reports point to the
BusLogic

module only working correctly when it's built into the kernel, rather than
being loaded as a loadable external module.  As provided with Ubuntu, the
SCSI bus seems to be reset at least twice by the kernel during startup, and
I'm not sure I see this with Mandriva or Knoppix.

Attached is a screenshot of the KDE Control Center's Disk & Filesystem
 settings that shows the 2 18Gb SCSI disks, MAG3182MP and DNES-318350W, are
 detected by Ubuntu.  They are seen as sdb and sdc.  These disks have
 partitions in common formats, but Ubuntu kernel can't see them.  "cfdisk
 /dev/sdb" and QTparted (and Gparted) are unable to operate on the disks for
 formatting or partitioning in any way.  This is not a sudo issue.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers edgy-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'edgy-updates'), (500, 'edgy-security'), (500, 'edgy')
Architecture: i386 (x86)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17-10-generic
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

** Affects: linux-meta (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Unconfirmed

-- 
linux-image: SCSI drives inaccessible to parted or any installation tool
https://launchpad.net/bugs/83068