Re: firewire 800 trouble

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Alexis Zubrow wrote:

> Thanks for the reply. I guess this raises a couple of questions. First, do
> I need to upgrade to kernel 2.6.* to possibly get this working? I'm hesitant
> to do this b/c this is a computational node that needs to be quite stable.

What I would probably try is compile the most recent 2.6.x kernel with the
appropriate firewire entries. I have:

CONFIG_IEEE1394=m
# CONFIG_IEEE1394_VERBOSEDEBUG is not set
# CONFIG_IEEE1394_OUI_DB is not set
CONFIG_IEEE1394_EXTRA_CONFIG_ROMS=y
# CONFIG_IEEE1394_CONFIG_ROM_IP1394 is not set
CONFIG_IEEE1394_PCILYNX=m
CONFIG_IEEE1394_OHCI1394=m
# CONFIG_IEEE1394_VIDEO1394 is not set
CONFIG_IEEE1394_SBP2=m
CONFIG_IEEE1394_SBP2_PHYS_DMA=y
# CONFIG_IEEE1394_ETH1394 is not set
CONFIG_IEEE1394_DV1394=m
CONFIG_IEEE1394_RAWIO=m
CONFIG_IEEE1394_CMP=m
CONFIG_IEEE1394_AMDTP=m

You could set the VERBOSEDEBUG but you might get huge amounts of messages.
I though I had the DEBUG set on, but `guess not.

What I do is "modprobe -v ohci1394" and "modprobe -v sbp2" and take a look
at dmesg each time to see what sort of messages come from the kernel.
You have to have the SD ( CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=y) as a module or compiled in.
I have a SCSI system so I have it compiled in (otherwise booting would be
problematic AFAIK.).

If the machine you are using needs to be on 24/7 you certainly may have a
problem trying a 2.6 kernel, but if the machine has off hours you could
reboot to the 2.6.x kernel for testing.

It's not trivial to convert from a strictly 2.4.x kernel system to a 2.6.x
kernel based system, although your distro maker may have a
straight-forward way. 2.4.x and 2.6.x can exist together, but you need
both the modutils and the module-init-tools (from memory) installed, and
the modules are sometimes different names in the /etc/modules file (if you
have one). I have discoverd that you can put both the 2.4 and the 2.6
modules in /etc/modules, and you just get what appears as harmless "FATAL"
messages during boot. :) People who have explored the complexities of the
kernel module system can sure get rid of these messages, but I do not have
that depth of knowledge about it.

> Is there any advantage of upgrading to a later 2.4.27 kernel? Presently, I'm
> using 2.4.24.

I don't know. I have read many times from this list the 2.4 series kernel
has more stable firewire. I have not been using the 2.4 kernels for some
months now, so I have not been trying them.

One other thing that might be relatively easy for you is get the Debian
Sarge Net Install disk,
http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/daily/i386/current/, I have
found it useful and it has successfully discovered a firewire card that
previously did not seem to get recognized. Not sure what kernel it has,
probably 2.6.8.1.

>
> Second, if the rescan script doesn't pick up the new sd device, what would
> you recommend for finding and testing it? I've tried gscanbus and it seems

I look in the /sys and /proc.
For instance in /sys,
[root@pc1 sys]# ls
block bus class devices firmware kernel module power
[root@pc1 sys]# cd bus
[root@pc1 bus]# ls
i2c i2o ide ieee1394 pci platform pnp scsi serio usb
[root@pc1 bus]# cd ieee1394/
[root@pc1 ieee1394]# ls
destroy_node devices drivers ignore_drivers rescan
[root@pc1 ieee1394]# ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 3 07:32 destroy_node
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 3 07:31 devices
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Dec 3 07:31 drivers
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 3 07:32 ignore_drivers
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 3 07:32 rescan
[root@pc1 ieee1394]# more rescan
You can force a rescan of the bus for drivers by writing a 1 to this file
[root@pc1 ieee1394]# more devices/

*** devices/: directory ***

[root@pc1 ieee1394]# cd de
[root@pc1 ieee1394]# cd devices/
[root@pc1 devices]# ls
0800286410000442 0800286410000442-0 fw-host0
[root@pc1 devices]# ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Dec 3 07:32 0800286410000442 ->
../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.0/fw-host0/0800286410000442
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Dec 3 07:32 0800286410000442-0 ->
../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.0/fw-host0/0800286410000442/0800286410000442-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Dec 3 07:32 fw-host0 ->
../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.0/fw-host0

I could not find the 1394 entries in /proc, maybe someone else can help.

> to do nothing. When I try killing it, the computer hangs and needs to be

I think gscanbus is pretty old. I know it works with GNOME 1.4 and GNOME
1.4 is really old now. It has sort of worked sometimes for me though.

I don't know why, but the rescan-scsi-bus.sh script only seems to find
SCSI and USB devices, not 1394, for me.

> hard rebooted. I've even tried using fdisk and hdparm on an assortment of
> devices to see if it is there:
> $ fdisk -l /dev/sd?

Yeah, if they are not there in the first place it is unlikely that will
work, but you should be able to guess which one it would be. If you have
no SCSI or USB storage devices then I presume the 1394 device(s) would
start at /dev/sda
>
> I haven't found anything this way. Again, I don't get any message when I
> plug and unplug the firewire, so I assume this means that it is not
> recognizing the disk.

You should see something in the kernel logs or using dmesg AFAIK.

>
> Some more hardware specs:
> Lacie Big Disk, OXFW912 bridge chipset
> Lacie firewire 800 pci card, ?? chipset

If you are handy with a screw driver, you could look at the cards and see
what models and numbers are on the chips. Maybe posting them would at
least give more knowledgeable people whether or not your hardware has been
worked on. I've done that posting a couple times, and at least no one
seemed too annoyed. In my very limited experience, all the firewire cards
have a Texas Instruments chipset, and most of the firewire boxes have an
Oxford chipset. As I said though, the box I have with a Oxford 911 chip
has not worked for me at all with Linux and I see you have a 912, which
would seem to be a minor revision of the 911 chip if the numbers can be
interpreted that way.

> > Thanks for the help.

I hope I did.

Fred

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Received on Fri Dec 3 13:58:03 2004