Binary package hint: linux-image-2.6.20-16-powerpc
On my PowerPC Mac with an internal Fast SCSI-2 bus built-in on the motherboard (uses 'mesh' driver as do all pre-IDE Macs), the Feisty kernel (2.6.20-series) during boot detects and then promptly offlines all except one SCSI device on the bus, out of 3 total hard disk drives and 2 CD drives, and leaves those devices offlined in the post-booted system. This happens both during a Feisty install (clean install tested via both the Netboot and CD methods, altho' the CD installer stops at failing to detect a CD) and also in the complete Feisty system as installed on that one accessible drive
In the past, Edgy was able to detect and access all drives flawlessly, as do Debian Sarge, Etch and Lenny; thus, it appears that something different about Feisty has broken what was working perfectly before. I might conjecture that it may have something do with the 'mesh' driver's interface to the kernel, or perhaps the initrd is misloading something, or loading a conflicting module, or loading modules in a problematic order?
The lone disk that ~is~ left accessible to Feisty is different in one obvious way: it is a Wide-Fast SCSI drive connected to the internal Fast SCSI-2 bus by a small port-converter adapter board (which has no active circuitry to speak of, just converts pinouts from the Micro-D port on the Wide drive to the 50-pin SCSI ribbon connector on the bus). It also appears to have been originally mfd for use in Sun applications, if the distant *nix-family association there may (not) be at all relevant to why this one works and all the others don't. This drive (at SCSI ID:1) and its partitions show up at /dev/sdc[1-7] during install (changes to /dev/sdb[1-7] in the installed system), which indicates that Feisty is at least detecting the presence of an sda and sdb (also sdd), albeit without any partitions, before it offlines them for any I/O access. Physically unplugging this drive does not restore access to any of the other devices; removing it results in ~no~ drives accessible to Feisty.
Of the two PCI cards in my system (one USB and one FireWire), unplugging all peripherals from those cards made no difference, nor did swapping their slot-order around, nor did physically removing either or both cards. Thus, it appears PCI is not relevant to this issue. I have read one report that using a SCSI controller PCI card worked fine, which reinforces my suspicion that the Mac internal SCSI bus and its 'mesh' driver module, or the loading of modules, are still the most likely places to investigate.
dmesg attachment to follow; relevant lines look like this contiguous excerpt:
mesh: target 0 synchronous at 5.0 MB/s
sd 0:0:0:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
I confirm the same "offlined" scsi bug with ubuntu704 on an OldWorld powermac 7300/180, resulting in failure to mount cdrom and one hard disk.
Comparison with ubuntu 610 installer shown in attached listings of dmesg, /proc/scsi/scsi and /dev/s*