Appendix C Device Configuration Guide (Intel Platform Edition) 3/99, 5/99, and 8/99

This appendix provides information about x86 hardware devices that are supported in the Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) 3/99, 5/99, and 8/99 computing environments and contains Device Reference Pages to solve configuration problems.

The information in this appendix supplements the Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) Device Configuration Guide.

Solaris 7 8/99 Device Configuration Guide

Adaptec AHA-2940U2B, 2940U2W, 2940U2/OEM, 2950U2B, 3950U2B HBAs

Preconfiguration Information

• Multi-initiator configurations are not supported.

• The Plug N Play SCAM Support option is not supported.

• Ensure that the Adaptec SCSISelect BIOS option Reset SCSI Bus at IC Initialization (under the Advanced Configuration Options menu) is set to Enabled. Run the SCSISelect utility by pressing Ctrl-A when you see the Adaptec banner during system boot.

• Reboot the system after you install patches.

• If you are both upgrading your Solaris Intel Platform Edition installation and adding a new device driver, you must first upgrade Solaris, then reboot your system, and then apply the Driver Update (DU), as follows.

  1. Perform the Solaris upgrade. Do not apply the cadp DU at this time.

  2. Reboot your system.

  3. When the system has rebooted successfully, insert the DU diskette into the diskette drive and apply the DU as follows.

     Mount the DOS formatted file system:

     # mount -Fpcfs /dev/diskette0 /mnt

     Change directories:

     # cd /mnt/DU/sol_27/i86pc/Tools

     Install the DU:

     # . ./install.sh -i

     Perform a reconfiguration reboot.

Known Problems and Limitations

• If you experience problems when using a narrow SCSI CD-ROM drive on the internal wide interface, disable "negotiate wide," "negotiate sync," or both for that device in the Adaptec configuration utility.

• If you experience problems when using the narrow internal connector, then disable "de-selection" in the Adaptec configuration utility.

• The Fujitsu narrow disk (M1603SAU) has been observed reselecting with an invalid queue tag ID. This is a violation of the SCSI protocol and it causes the cadp driver to behave erroneously. Because this is difficult to guard against, it is best to disable tagged queuing for these targets.

  Use the iostat -E command to determine if you have a Fujitsu M1603S-512 disk. If you do, edit the /kernel/drv/cadp.conf file and add the property target n -scsi -options=0x1f78, where n is the target number.

• The IBM external wide disk (DFHSS2W, Revision 1717) is not supported.

Configuration Procedure

Using the Adaptec configuration utility:

• Configure each SCSI device to have a unique SCSI ID. On the Advanced Configuration Options menu, set Plug N Play SCAM Support to Disabled.

  Ensure that devices on either end of the SCSI chain are terminated. When mixing wide (16 bits) and narrow (8 bits) devices on the same wide chain, ensure that a wide device is at the end of the chain. If a narrow device is placed at the end of the chain, the wide devices on the same chain only have the low byte terminated, and this is an illegal configuration.

• If there is more than one controller (or an embedded controller), try to use one IRQ per controller.

• Enable bus mastering for the slot(s) with your host bus adapter(s), when asked.

• For older disk drives, tape drives, and most CD-ROM devices, make sure the maximum SCSI data transfer speed is set to 5.0 Mbps.

• Enable support for disks larger than 1 Gbyte if applicable.

LSI Logic (formerly Symbios Logic or NCR) 53C810, 53C810A, 53C815, 53C820, 53C825, 53C825A, 53C860, 53C875, 53C875J, 53C876, 53C895 HBAs

Preconfiguration Information

Known Problems and Limitations

• Because the NCR BIOS and the Solaris fdisk program may be incompatible, use the DOS version of FDISK (or equivalent utility) to create an entry in the FDISK partition table before installing the Solaris software. Create at least a 1-cylinder DOS partition starting at cylinder 0. If the DOS partition isn't created, the system won't reboot after Solaris installation.

• An add-in card with the 53C815, 53C820, 53C825, or 53C825A controller can only be used in a bus-mastering PCI slot. On motherboards with only two PCI slots, both of the PCI slots are usually bus-master capable. On motherboards with three or more PCI slots, and on motherboards with several embedded PCI controllers, some of the PCI slots may not be bus-master capable.

• Some PCI motherboards with the LSI Logic SDMS BIOS and an embedded 53C810 or 53C810A controller do not work correctly with the 53C82x family of add-in cards that also have an LSI Logic SDMS BIOS. Upgrading the motherboard BIOS, the add-in card, or both may prevent these conflicts.

• On some early PCI systems with the 53C810 chip on the motherboard, the interrupt pin on the chip is not connected. Such a system cannot be used with Solaris software.

• Do not attempt to connect wide targets to the narrow connector of the cards listed as supporting narrow disks. These configurations are not supported.

• The Solaris ncrs driver does not support the Wide SCSI option. Some add-in 53C8xx cards include connectors for both narrow cables (8-bit SCSI A cables) and wide cables (16-bit SCSI P cables). You can connect devices to the SCSI Wide connectors using SCSI P cables, but the Solaris ncrs driver will not initiate or accept the Wide Data Transfer option. The attached devices will function in 8-bit narrow mode.

• If your adapter supports the LSI Logic SCSI Configuration utility, which can be accessed by pressing Control-C, do not change the value of the Host SCSI ID (an option under the Adapter Setup menu) to anything but 7.

• If you experience problems with old target devices, add the following entry to the /kernel/drv/ncrs.conf file:

  targetN-scsi-options = 0x0;

  where N is the ID of the failing target.

• If you are using a Conner 10805 narrow SCSI drive, you might see warnings like:

  WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1000,f@d(ncrs0): invalid reselection(0,0) WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1000,f@d/sd@0,0(sd0): SCSI transport failed: 'reset: retrying command'

  You can suppress these warnings by disabling tagged queuing in the ncrs.conf file. See the ncrs(7D) man page.

• On some Pentium motherboards (Intel NX chipset) using P90 or slower processors, ncrs hangs and this message is displayed on the console:

  WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1000,3@6(ncrs0) Unexpected DMA state:active dstat=c0<DMA-FIFO-empty, master-data-parity-error>

  This is an unrecoverable state; the system will not install using the ncrs driver.

• The ncrs driver supports Revision 4 and above of the 53C875 chipset. Previous revisions were pre-release versions of the chip, so there might still be a few in circulation.

• In rare circumstances, when using an SDT7000/SDT9000 tape drive, you see this message on the console:

  Unexpected DMA state: ACTIVE. dstat=81<DMA-FIFO-empty,illegal-instruction>

  In these instances, the system recovers and the tape drive remains usable. You can still use the tar command to add or extract files to or from the tape in the drive.

Solaris 7 5/99 Device Configuration Guide

LSI Logic (formerly Symbios) 64-Bit PCI Dual Channel Ultra2 SCSI 53C896 HBA

Preconfiguration Information

Known Problems and Limitations

• For Ultra2 SCSI LVD transfer, make sure you use Ultra2 SCSI LVD-compliant SCSI cable. Also, for best performance, keep the devices 6 to 8 inches apart.

• If both the 53C896 chip and an older 53C8xx chip are embedded on the motherboard, when your system boots, the system BIOS recognizes the older 53C8xx chip first. In this case, wait until the newer version of the Symbios SDMS BIOS, which supports the newer 53C896 chip, recognizes all 53C8xx chips embedded on your motherboard before proceeding.

  To prevent the older BIOS utility from coming up, reflash the older 53C8xx BIOS of the add-in controller.

  You can download the latest Symbios SDMS BIOS from http://www.symbios.com/techsupport/pci_sw.htm#Symbios CPI BIOS & Flash Utility.

• Due to a hardware problem in revisions B0 and C0 of the 53C896 chip, the symhisl driver does not work properly with 64-bit PCI slots. The symhisl driver issues a SCSI bus reset when the problem occurs. To avoid this problem, upgrade to revision C1 of the 53C896 chip.

  Other revisions of the 53C896 chip may exhibit hardware incompatibilities with earlier PCI chips and designs. For a complete list of errata about each revision of the 53C896 chip, see LSI Logic's Web site (http://www.lsil.com).

• Under some conditions, LVD technology may exhibit firmware incompatibilities. If you experience SCSI errors with a correctly configured LVD SCSI bus, contact the manufacturer for updated firmware.

Solaris 7 3/99 Device Configuration Guide

Added Support for Physical Address Extension (PAE) Mode

With the release of Pentium Pro, Intel introduced a mode called PAE (Physical Address Extension) on its advanced processors. By using PAE, Solaris (Intel Platform Edition) can address up to 32 Gbytes of physical memory. Individual processes are still limited to a maximum of 3.5 Gbytes of virtual address space.

PAE mode enables you to run multiple instances of databases and memory-intensive applications, and to support large numbers of online users on your machine.

It is best to use PCI disk controllers that support Dual Address Cycle (DAC) in your machine because they can transfer data to and from any physical location. Other cards are limited to 4 Gbytes of physical memory, and as a result performance may slow down because the system needs to copy additional memory to transfer data.

Some device drivers are not yet able to take advantage of PAE mode. Sun has tested PCI device drivers written by Sun on x86 based machines with more than 4 Gbytes of memory. Sun's OEM partners intend to test their machines with devices they supply on x86 based machines with more than 4 Gbytes of memory. In some cases however, if you add a third-party device driver to your system, it may become unstable, and panics and data corruption may result. If your system becomes unstable and you need that driver, you must disable PAE mode support.

Disabling PAE Mode Support

To disable support for PAE mode, follow these steps:

1. Reboot your machine.

2. Interrupt autoboot by pressing the Esc key.

   The Solaris Device Configuration Assistant starts.

3. Press F2_Continue until the Boot Solaris screen is displayed.

4. Press F4_Boot Tasks.

   The Boot Tasks screen is displayed.

5. Select View/Edit Property Settings.

   The View/Edit Property Settings screen is displayed.

6. Press F4_Create.

   The Create Property screen is displayed.

7. In the Specify Property Name field, type mmu-modlist and press Enter.

8. In the Specify Value field, type mmu32 and press Enter.

   The message "Updating Saved Configuration information..." is displayed on the Updating screen. When the property and value are saved successfully, the View/Edit Property Settings screen is displayed.

9. Press F2_Back.

   The Boot Tasks screen is displayed.

10. Press F3_Back.

    After drivers on your machine are loaded, the Boot Solaris screen is displayed.

11. Continue booting your machine as you normally would.