Topic: Upgrade to 5.6 locks up SMP server

[Gene Cooper]

Hi All,

I just upgraded one of my customer's server to 5.6.  The upgrade process seemed to go flawlessly, until the reboot.  The server was completely finished booting EXCEPT for rc.local.  

I had two additional lines in rc.local...one for UPS monitoring software (which testing shows is not the problem)...the other loads an additional SCSI driver (module ) to which the DAT tape drive is connected.  Here are the relevant lines from rc.local:

# Load built-in Adaptec SCSI Controller driver and SCSI tape module
insmod aic7xxx
insmod st

For some reason, the adaptec module never loaded automatically when I originally built the server, so I just added it to rc.local.  This seemed to work well BEFORE the upgrade to 5.6.  It STILL works if I boot in UP (uniprocessor) mode.  But if I boot in SMP mode, the server locks up hard with this as the very last line displayed on-screen:

using /lib/modules/2.4.18-5smp/kernel/drivers/scsi/aic7xxx/aic7xxx.o

If I rem out the insmod lines, the server WILL boot in SMP mode...but the Adaptec SCSI driver is not loaded (though st.o IS) and the tape drive is not available.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me?  Is there actually a problem with this driver module?  Or is there a better way to load this module?  Etc.?

TIA,

G