Re: [Xen-devel] Re: aic79xx failures with pvops dom0 2.6.32.25

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2010-11-23 at 23:18 +0000, micah anderson wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:28:29 -0500, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk 
> <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > [   16.572048] scsi0 : Adaptec AIC79XX PCI-X SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 3.0
> > > [   16.572051]         <Adaptec AIC7902 Ultra320 SCSI adapter>
> > > [   16.572053]         aic7902: Ultra320 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, PCI-X 
> > > 101-133MHz, 512 SCBs
> > > [   16.572598] aic79xx 0000:03:02.1: found PCI INT B -> IRQ 5
> > 
> > That is a rather odd IRQ number that is shared amongst all of the devices. 
> > Is there
> > a "OS Compatibility" BIOS option where you can select Linux?
> 
> In the BIOS, under Advanced -> PCI/PnP Configuration there is the
> option: Installed OS, which can take one of these options: Other, Win95,
> Win98, WinME, Win2000. I presume it should be set to "Other"?

In an ideal world, where the BIOS vendor actually tested the "Other"
mode, then yes.

Unfortunately the reality is that new machines are often only tested
with some version (maybe 2!) of Windows and nothing else and any other
configuration items are therefore potentially buggy.

e.g. this happens with ACPI which include provision for the firmware to
ask the OS for a list of interfaces (roughly: OS versions) which it
supports and the firmware behaviour will differ based on the content of
that list. Linux always presents a list of Windows specific interfaces
in this list (and no Linux interfaces) precisely because firmware is
often buggy if you don't because it was never tested on anything other
than Windows. See acpi_default_supported_interfaces in
drivers/acpi/acpica/utosi.c and the comment which precedes it.

So, unfortunately, the pragmatic answer to this sort of question is
often "whichever one works for you" or perhaps even "whichever version
of Windows was current when the machine was released". :-(

Ian.


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