Core 6 installation hangs raid problem?

[WastedYouth]

When i try to install FC6 it hangs just after starting the Xwindows after anaconda starts, i ran it again in text mode, and found it got to this...

"/dev/sdb: "pdc" and "isw" formats discovered (using isw)!"
"/dev/sdb: "sil" and "isw" formats discovered (using isw)!"
"dev/sda: "sil" and "isw" formats discovered (using isw)!"

then it stops and does nothing, im new to linux and dont know what this means so any advice would be greatly appreciated. I have been through the instalation some times now, and have found if i try to put a drive in, (i dont have any i was just looking) but it sees i have 2 harddrive partitions, which is correct, and then sees four sd's eg sda, sdb, sdc and sdd, (i think) but i dont know what these are i only have 2 cd drives.

My system spec is :
P4 prescott 3.2 @ 4ghz
1Gb DDR400 @ 500mhz
Abit IC7-G mobo
3 x 80gb SATA hdds off a pci sata raid card running in RAID 0
geforce 5700LE

Cheers Chris

[annuzzer]

@ WastedYouth:

I'm facing the issue too. There seems to be absolutely NO WAY to get FC6 installed to either my desktop pc (AMD 64, nVIDIA GeForce 7600) or my laptop (http://search.hp.com/query.html?lang=en&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&qt=dv6023ea&la=en&cc=us). Graphical installer freezes reproducibly after selecting the partitions to mount and the packages to install (means: at the beginning of the actual installation process.

Ann

[JEO]

Chris -
It sounds like you have some old raid controller metadata left on your drives and it is confusing the installer. pdc is promise and sil is silicon image. The metadata gets written to the drives when you attach them to the particular vendor's card and create an array.

I don't know the solution, but it probably involves putting the drives back on the vendors cards to erase the unwanted metadata. I would back up all your data first of course.

[WastedYouth]

im afraid we dont have the same problem ann i cant even get to the partition selection or anything else part, the only thing i see is a cross for my mouse pointer then it hangs,

JEO you say i have left over metadata, i failed to mention (sorry) but i still have windows installed on the same array, and would wish to not destroy this, so your solution wont work im afraid... but you mention promise yet ive never had promise on there, it is a silicon add-in pci card, the only thing ive done recently is to re-flash this to a newer bios. is there a way to force it to use the silicon drivers and not promise? I have tried noprobe option and specified the devices but there were none there that were the same as mine, and the only FC that silicon support is before 6, so im stuck for drivers at the mo... ill look for some 3rd party drivers but i doubt they will be out yet, but everywhere i look people have a problem with the installation but they all get past me, and a lot of them have raids so if what you say is correct, is there a way to get rid of the "old" metadata? how do you find / view it?

Chris

Thanks for the help btw

[SevenHands]

Same problem here. My system hangs as soon as the graphical installer starts up. All I see is a jumbled image or maybe just a line or two in the display. Oddly the mouse moves around though. I'm not happy at all with FC6 right now and I see I'm not alone. I have tried installing on an nvriad (software raid) zero configuration (A8n-sli mobo), although I'm having trouble believing that the cause is somehow related to the RAID. I get a successful install by using the text installer, but when the install is finished, I've logged in and do a startx to start the x server, same problem happens. jumbled graphics with a moveable cursor. Switching virtual consoles via alt-f1, etc does not work.

[WastedYouth]

ok solution... i heard from someone that if you use the command "linux nodmraid" at install it will work, they werent lying, ive installed fedora :D and now ive lost everything my win xp wont boot fedora wont boot i jsut get grub command come up :( o well off to grub.conf, though i have no idea what to do...

[JEO]

Unfortunately, it sounds like you lost your Windows data.
the nodmraid option means that it will treat your drives as individual drives and not as a raid array. So most likely you overwrote one of the drives with a fedora installation on it. It won't boot because your raid bios is expecting data to be on the array, not just one drive. If you can change the bios to boot from one of the drives in non raid mode you can probably find the one that has FC6 on it.

About the metadata, if you never used the drives on a promise array maybe someone who had the drives before you did? One way to get rid of the metadata is to use the dmraid -E option to erase metadata, but this command has not worked well for me in the past (usually complains about the array not being complete or something and won't erase).

[WastedYouth]

o well that sucks, o well i gues thats what happens when you play with what you dont know, strange though, because during installation fc trated my drives as a volume, isnt this the array? and also if i told it to install in a small partitio of said volume, would that have gone over xp, even though xp wasnt in that partition? my last thing is grub wont now do anything i see "grub boot loader 1.5" then my computer restarts... ive tried running fixmbr from windows disk but that didnt do anything... im really stuck...

[JEO]

I believe by default it uses logical volumes (LVM, logical volume management), which can span across multiple disks (don't know if it actually does use more than one or not by default, haven't tried it. So it's possible it installed itself that way. However it still would have ruined your exisiting data because it was not accessing the drives the same way and in the same striped raid0 order that the raid controller bios does.

As far as fixing grub goes, if you boot from the installation media you should be able to type linux rescue and that will allow you to reinstall grub manually. You can use fdisk -l to show what partitions it sees on each disk. For example fdisk -l /dev/sda would show the first scsi disk partitions and fdisk -l by itself would show all disks. After determining which disk(s) linux is on then u can install grub again.

[mxracer95]

im afraid we dont have the same problem ann i cant even get to the partition selection or anything else part, the only thing i see is a cross for my mouse pointer then it hangs,
Exact same problem here. If the embedded software RAID is enabled, it hangs at the white cross/mouse pointer.

I have an ASUS P5MT-S with ICH7R controller. I can switch between Intel Matrix Storage or LSI Logic MegaRAID controllers and both result in the same hang.

Some help is needed here. There is obviously a problem with FC6 and FakeRAIDs.

[mxracer95]

I just noticed it is loading the AHCI driver and this seems to be the problem. I used the "noprobe" option and tried loading the megaraid drivers and I get as far as the drive selection but it isn't recognizing any drives. I tried the mbox driver for the heck of it and it shows no drives either.

So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the hanging problem is because the AHCI driver is loading when we're in RAID mode and not AHCI mode, and we (or at least I) need a MegaRAID driver that works.

[WastedYouth]

well heres an update, i found that there was a problem because as JEO rightly said i have two sets of metadata, however i CANNOT for the life of me get rid of them, i have done a low level format on EACH drive after destroying the RAID set. I then went into fedoras rescue boot mode, and ran dmraid -an and it stopped 2 raid sets, but then when i try and use the dmraid -r -E option to delete the metadata i get a segmentation fault. So it seems to be protecting itself against me tampering.

MXracer95 you say you have a similar problem when you boot, but what does it say when you use linux text, keeping dmraid on... ? is it same / close to mine? because thats what seems to be upsetting fedora at the minute, whereas XP does not see this metadata at all, but linux can and because it can it wont work because its not sure what format im using, because i still have some promise metadata there...

The way i see it though im no expert by a LONG shot but i think if i managed to reset the metadata and have just my sil ones which is correct for my silicon add-in card then i think it would work... but blow me if i can find out how to clear metadata...

[WastedYouth]

:) OK GOT IT !!!! my thought was right, heres how i went about it, note that currently i dont have a working dual boot but fedora is installing on my raid! without using the nodmraid command...

1.) i used dmraid -r to see which formats were on the metadata of my drive, 2 drives had both isw and sil, however one drive, which i did get 2nd hand had isw, sil and pdc.

2.) so from this i re-booted into the rescue mode, and this time let the installer probe (so no noprobe command) but then NOT mounting it, this allowed me to access the drives without getting a segmenatation falut.

3.) from this i removed all formats using dmraid -r -E, however on the drive with 3 formats this had a little trouble so i removed them one at a time, by using "dmraid -r -E -f [sil OR pdc or ISW] and then it let me

4.) once i did this i rebooted again and went into my raid config bios and remade the raid array, then i booted back into the rescue mode to check the raid was ok now, and the dmraid -r showed all 3 drives where one raid with only a single format

then i installed xp, now i am installing fedora, also this :

http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html

is an amazing guide for a noob like me....


well i hope this helps someone, and if i can help anyone else then please let me know, i would be more than willing if i can help. Thanks to everyone here though JEO especially for pointing me in the right direction.

Chris

[JEO]

You're welcome for the advice, glad you were able to get it installing again in fake-raid mode. Good idea about how to get dmraid -E command working also. :)

[WastedYouth]

if only it was all that simple, all my dual boot thing is working but fedora is a mystery to me, i have no gui, i have to start in init 3, because startx says i have no drivers, i downloaded Nvidia......run file ran that, said i needed a kernel interface, but it couldnt find one online for me, so it tried top build one, that failed because i didnt have the kernel source downloaded, so i got yum to get me the kernel-devel package for my kernel, installed that, but now it attempts to build but just fails... o well, does anyone know where i can get the nv module it says i need?

[mjmwired]

if only it was all that simple, all my dual boot thing is working but fedora is a mystery to me, i have no gui, i have to start in init 3, because startx says i have no drivers, i downloaded Nvidia......run file ran that, said i needed a kernel interface, but it couldnt find one online for me, so it tried top build one, that failed because i didnt have the kernel source downloaded, so i got yum to get me the kernel-devel package for my kernel, installed that, but now it attempts to build but just fails... o well, does anyone know where i can get the nv module it says i need?

Can you post the *exact* errors you are seeing? Also what were the exact commands you ran to try to get your X-server working (ie. installing the nvidia driver)?

[tabish121]

I've run into a similar problem on my DELL XPS Gen5 machine with Intel Matrix RAID Controller, I've got two new Seagate drives that are in a RAID 1 config, and the installer hangs when starting the X part of the installation process. If I config the drives as separate SATA drives the installer can see them fine. These drives are both new blanks, so I'm really lost as to what to try.

[WastedYouth]

Well dont worry about me, i fell into the trap with the new nvidia drivers, and then wont install because apparently the drivers are trying to access a deprecated .h file, but i used a guide i found to install from yum (just adding a new repository i think) and it worked, best bit, i tinkered myself with the xorg.conf and dual screens working in less than 2 mins, FC is mint for that, and so far its nice, only trouble i have now is trying to install updates fom the gui just hangs and then says it timeedout and has no mirrors :( could anyone give me some mirrors to try, and how to get them in there...

as for tabish121, have you tried booting into rescue mode with :

"linux nodmraid rescue", then at command type :

dmraid -r, that will tell you which formats you have on your drives, this is the metadata left over from a raid array, or one for your current raid array, and if you then compare the 3 letter code to the list from :

dmraid -l, you can see which ones you need, if you then have more than the intel ones you need FC will moan and not install, so you need to use
dmraid -r -E
and it will delete all the metadata, and then running the command dmraid -r will say you have no raid, then go and destroy your raid from bootup bios, and then re-create it, and try installing at again, but if you have ANY data it WILL be gone... If you have trouble deleting the metadata because you have more than 2 on one drive, then try using

dmraid -r -E -f <fmt>

where <fmt> should be the 3 letter code of the format you want to delete, you could try this first and jsut delete the one you dont want, but it might still destroy your raid, but once fedora is convinced there is no raid, then recreate the array and install as normal, hope this helps, post back if you want to know anymore, ill try as best i can to help you but be warned in new to linux, this is what i learnt from my own experience, about a week ago... but now i have FC 6 on and its nice :D

[tabish121]

Thanks for the tips. I'm hesitant to try this as I have two raid array's one with XP installed (which I want to keep) and one with two new seagate 160 GB drives that I want to run Linux on. It sounds like the dmraid will kill all my raid drives which is not what I want. Is there a way to selectively delete metadata from one raid array only?

[JEO]

If it's not in the fedora core, or extras repositories you could try searching the repositories over at livna.org or freshrpms.net to see if they have the latest nvidia driver.

[tabish121]

I've run dmraid -r and it reports that all my drives have only isw metadata on them. Any other ideas why the installer would be locking up, as this is correct for my Intel Matrix Storage Controller on the Dell.

[JEO]

Maybe you should try a text mode installation so you can see what the last piece of text is when it locks up.

[WastedYouth]

If it's not in the fedora core, or extras repositories you could try searching the repositories over at livna.org or freshrpms.net to see if they have the latest nvidia driver.


cheers but the next time i logged in it all worked, must have wated a reboot :S

[WastedYouth]

i did read something about somones installer stopping because of their cd-rom, but i think jeo has the best idea, text install and post what it says...

[tabish121]

When I run the install in text mode the only thing that happens differently is that right after the line showing the probe of my NVIdia 6800 NV41.1 (I think) card, the screen goes blue instead of black.

[JEO]

There are some issues with nvida drivers. Also there is the anaconda improperly instatlling a kernel being the i586 version instead of the i686 version, which can prevent the video driver from loading if the driver module does not match the architecture.
If you have the i586 kernel installed you can download or use the kernel i686 rpm on the FC6 disc, copy it to a directory by itself and use a commad like
rpm -Uvh kernel* will replace it with the i686 kernel and modules.

[tabish121]

Since I don't get into the installer, I don't think anaconda installing an improper kernel is a problem. I also can get into the installer if I don't link the two seagate drives into an ARRAY. They are then visible as two SATA drives. As soon as I link them, the installer will hang.

[JEO]

The only thing I can say is boot up from the linux installation media and type linux rescue and play around with dmraid and your array. Like dmraid -ay and dmraid -an, dmraid -r, dmraid -b, dmraid -s to try to see what is going on.

[MitchLoft]

I am going nuts trying to install FC6 to an AMD64x2 using an Adaptec SCSI RAID controller and 15K drives. I finally tried a text install and got back an error message advising to try to "noapic" argument with the linux boot from the install DVD. This actually works. I am able to install FC6 to the raid. However. Once the install is finished, upon reboot the system will read the boot track, display grub, then hang almost immediatly when it tries to load the kernel. I have installed an IDE drive and mounted that up to /boot and that works OK -- installs with the "noapic" option (I suppose maybe you could turn that off on the MB bios, but my damn ASUS MB won't let me do it...) then boots up and runs fine.

[WastedYouth]

i just googled noAPIC, and aPIC is the replacement for old pc chip for interrupts, you have an AMD64 iwonder why it said turn it off, just because it works doesnt neccessarily mean its what you want, when you say grub hangs what do you mean? on a command GRUB> and then nothing, or its shows GRUB loader stage 1 / 1.5 or 2 etc and then does nothing?

if it hangs at GRUB>, thats what mine did, and it was because it couldnt read GRUB, because i had installed it on nodmraid but i had a raid, so basically it could be that it cant read grub, the mbr may point to somewhere which is either corrupt, unreadable or not there.

[MitchLoft]

No - if it just did GRUB>, I'd figg'r I needed to do a fresh grub install. GRUB will load, but the kernel will not start up after selectiion, which, at this time, there is only ONE kernel installed. I get just a couple of lines indicating that it is TRYING to start, (apparently trying to start up initrd) then it locks up. The work around of loading the /boot partition onto an EIDE drive seems to be working OK. I'm suspicious of either A) the SCSI controller (Adaptec 2120S) or possibly B) Chipset problem. I'm going to be swapping out this ASUS MB for an MSI anyway account needing at least 3 PCI slots -- so I'll see what happens then.

[Jongi]

To run in text mode is it linux text?

[MitchLoft]

To run in text mode is it linux text?
Yes, that's how you start the installation process in text mode after booting from the install media

[br0wn]

Hi,
I'm having a similar problem. This is on a new machine with windows mce installed.
The spec is: Core2 Duo 6600, Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, Nvidia Geforce 7950gt with 2 harddrives (a 450gb sata drive, and an older 120gb ide drive).
I have windows mce installed on the 450gb sata drive. I want to install fedora 6 on the 120 gb.
But, it always hang after anaconda has started (I can move the mouse around though).
I tried using linux text to install, it reports:

ERROR: pdc: seeking device "/dev/sdb/" to 18446744073709502976
ERROR: sil: seeking device "/dev/sdb" to 18446744073709354496

Anyone has any suggestion how to remedy this problem? I dont setup raid at the moment. The motherboard supports several raid controllers though.
Please help so I can install fedora 6.

[MitchLoft]

Well, I have swapped out motherboards. I had to have at least 3 PCI slots, and the ASUS onlt had 2. I am now sporting an MSI K9N Neo with Nvidia 550 chips. FC6 booted properly and is now installing from DVD right "out of the box" using the MSI board. I don't know for sure if It will boot from the SCSI RAID yet because the load hasn't quite finished, but the install is certainly going much smoother. I'm getting a pretty bad taste in my mouth from ASUS lately....

Later : Yep - boots just fine right from the SCSI array. So, I guess from now on it's going to be, "Screw ASUS" for me....

[br0wn]

Hi,
I'm having a similar problem. This is on a new machine with windows mce installed.
The spec is: Core2 Duo 6600, Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, Nvidia Geforce 7950gt with 2 harddrives (a 450gb sata drive, and an older 120gb ide drive).
I have windows mce installed on the 450gb sata drive. I want to install fedora 6 on the 120 gb.
But, it always hang after anaconda has started (I can move the mouse around though).
I tried using linux text to install, it reports:

ERROR: pdc: seeking device "/dev/sdb/" to 18446744073709502976
ERROR: sil: seeking device "/dev/sdb" to 18446744073709354496

Anyone has any suggestion how to remedy this problem? I dont setup raid at the moment. The motherboard supports several raid controllers though.
Please help so I can install fedora 6.

I finally able to install fedora 6. Turns out the problem is with Jmicron controller (I connected my PATA IDE drive to this). So, my solution was to remove the 2nd drive. Then, I was able to install Fedora 6.