Gentoo 1.2 Install / AIC7xxx issues (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=5183&highlight=aic7xxx)
Installed Gentoo 1.2 on my home whitebox system, no troubles at all, but then again, I disable my SCSI disk for my *nix distributions... Trying to install onto an Intel 2150 2U rack server now, with dual 750 PII's, 1 GB RAM, and a 17GB SCSI disk, hosted on a hot swap carriage off an Intel L440GX+ systembaord... If I boot from tomsrtbt, a kernel loads with no problems, and I can access /dev/sda with no problem.
When I boot from Gentoo1.2 boot cd, the pci detection picks up the aic7xxx controller and the network card as it should, but when I go to run fdisk, I get the device not found error. Sure enough, /dev doesn't contain any sd* devices, but a /scsi is there, alas, it is empty :) See my post at gentoo.org above, if you have any insight, it'd be much appreciated.
Geoff
Oops, guess I hadn't logged in yet...
Did you try using Gentoo 1.4. I know it's in test, but I had no problems with 1.3b. That was the alpha version to 1.4. They supposedly have new drivers on the 1.4 boot disk. Also, why don't you use Tom boot disk to install Gentoo? Boot up the Computer with Tom's Boot Disk, format and all that, wget the 1.4 tarbal, extract, and continue the installation as normal.
Jon
This is a production box, I can't use alpha releases, only stable... Let me try doing it from the boot disk...
Ok, wget the tarball for stage 1 of 1.2. Since it is production, you will want to start from Stage 1. You might want to wait, because 1.4 is supposed to become stable soon. It will have gcc3.2. Gcc 3.2 better optimizes code for speed. I noticed a big difference in performace going from gcc 2.95 to 3.1.1 and recompiling everything. Granted it takes longer to compile with 3.x but the performance is better.
Jon
Stiffler's got a good idea. Are you having problems with the boot kernel in gentoo 1.2 or something? If so, go with Stiffler's idea, b/c then you can get all your drivers installed, etc.