Weird Grub/linux/not really fedora problem

nick.stumpos · #1 6th November 2007, 07:48 PM

Ok so this isnt really a fedora specific problem, but it happens on fedora too, and you guys seem pretty smart so lets see who can help me.
Ok, so Ive been through every distro I can think of on this stupid laptop I just got and this one problem is driving me mad.(fyi debian lenny x86_64 is what is on there now).
the problem, when booting the root partition is not always found.
with the default settings on pretty much every distro, it will boot if I let it boot, then do a hard powerdown while its booting but before the kernel panic and then restart.
So I remade the initrd image with and this time instead of the kernel panicing it drops me into busybox, I have a look around and for some reason it is seeing the harddrive as sdb instead of sda, so i change this accordingly in grub, and now the kernel panics. Still sounds like an initrd problem so ive tried ones made with yaird, mkinitrddamfs, and mkinitrd, all with similar problems. So the next step, I grabbed the vanilla kernel src, and compiled everything i need into it, and set grub to just boot the kernel without the need for a ramfs. now here is where it seems to get weirder. If my kernel line has root at /dev/sda1 the kernel panics saying the only valid partitions it can find are on /dev/sdb again weird b/c their is only one hd in this laptop but fine, so if I change my kernel line to root=/dev/sdb1 it again panics sayiong it only sees mount points at sda, now the weirdest part, if at the grub screen i edit the kernel line, and erase root=/dev/sdb1 and retype root=/dev/sdb1 it boots every time. I am at a loss as to why. I also had heard their were some problems with the scsi naming stack, so I tried the same things using labels, but again the only way it boots is if i manually edit the line at boot time and change root=LABEL=/ to root=LABEL=/
So anyone got any ideas. ps here is also something wierd.

fdisk -l with my kernel and th grub line editting booting or with new initrd

Quote:

NickLaptop:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 8 MB, 8388608 bytes
8 heads, 32 sectors/track, 64 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 256 * 512 = 131072 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x93f73831

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 19106 153468913+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 19107 19457 2819407+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 19107 19457 2819376 82 Linux swap / Solaris

and with the hard reboots on the stock kernels with stock initrd

Quote:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x93f73831

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 19106 153468913+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 19107 19457 2819407+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 19107 19457 2819376 82 Linux swap / Solaris

any ideas?

Dies · #2 6th November 2007, 07:53 PM

Very weird.

What's your partition layout? Where is grub?

Any updates for your laptop?

nick.stumpos · #3 6th November 2007, 07:55 PM

just edited in the partition layout, Ive tried a bunch but on this last install, I just did the default of all ext3 whole fs on 1 partition, figured it would be the easiest to debug, grub is on the mbr of the only harddrive in this laptop

Im not aware of any, updates for the laptop its a compaq persario v6620us.

nick.stumpos · #4 6th November 2007, 08:05 PM

this is also a little troublesome, lots of unknown devices

Quote:

NickLaptop:~# lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0547 (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0548 (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0542 (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0541 (rev a2)
00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0543 (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055e (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055f (rev a2)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055e (rev a2)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055f (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0560 (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055c (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0561 (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0550 (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 054c (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0563 (rev a2)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0563 (rev a2)
00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0531 (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
02:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832 (rev 05)
02:05.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
02:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 12)
02:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
02:05.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 02)

lots of unknown devices, but it runs great after it boots, ethernet, wireless, compiz fusion all work great, though admittedly after some heavy tweaking for the networking stuff

nick.stumpos · #5 6th November 2007, 08:53 PM

some more info if it helps anyone

Quote:

nickisgod1@NickLaptop:~$ cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
default 0
timeout 1
color cyan/blue white/blue

title Debian Lenny, nickLaptop.custom
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.23nickLaptop.custom root=/dev/sdb1 ro
#initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.23nickLaptop.custom

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.22-2-amd64
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-2-amd64 root=/dev/sdb1 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-2-amd64

dmesg is attached

anybody have any clue what sda is.
I think i fail to understand how scsi works.
anybody wants any other info just ask.

lmo · #6 16th November 2007, 06:02 PM

Fedoras use grub.conf vs. menu.lst ... other distros use menu.lst

Quote:

nickisgod1@NickLaptop:~$ cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
default 0
timeout 1

Is the menu.lst a link or a separate file ...
I am the only one confused by this, though.

my_linux · #7 17th November 2007, 09:50 AM

The menu.lst file is a link in Fedora to /boot/grub/grub.conf. There is also a grub.conf link in /etc pointing to /boot/grub/grub.conf.

Dies · #8 6th November 2007, 09:01 PM

Wow. Yeah weird problem, though I'm pretty sure it's not grub related.

Just from your dmesg I would suggest adding a couple options to your boot line

pci=nommconf idle=poll acpi_osi=Linux

Also I think you were on the right track with the vanilla kernel, but maybe try a few versions back, just to see if there is any difference.

nick.stumpos · #9 6th November 2007, 10:26 PM

yeah im pretty sure its not grub too, just that the workaround uses it, ive been trying different combos of boot params to, havent tried acpi_osi=Linux though, what does that do? maybe i will try an older kernel, always been doing net instals so the oldest kernel ive tried is 2.6.22. Well thats not technically true, slack had a 2.4 kernel, but i need a 2.6 so thats really no help. slack did boot fine though. any clue what device sda is referring too?

nick.stumpos · #10 7th November 2007, 02:49 AM

the boot param rootdelay=10 seems to have done the trick, seems the default is 8, which apparently isnt long enough for this drive to settle, hopefully im not speaking too soon
yeah I spoke to soon, still have the problem

my_linux · #11 10th November 2007, 03:32 PM

Unfortunately I don't know enough to troubleshoot as well as done in this post but things do seem remarkably similar to the problem I have with Fedora 7 / 8. In my case it is an Acer Aspire 7520 which appears to have very similar hardware as your Compaq.

The error appears to happen during driver initialization as follows leading to a kernel panic:

Waiting for driver initialization.
Loading ata_generic.ko module.
Trying to resume from LABEL=SWAP-sda3.
Unable to access resume device (LABEL=SWAP-sda3)

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...d.php?t=168204

lspci:

The Atheros wireless is misidentified as the 5006 when it is the 5007.

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0547 (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0548 (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0542 (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0541 (rev a2)
00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0543 (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055e (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055f (rev a2)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055e (rev a2)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055f (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0560 (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0561 (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0550 (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 054c (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0563 (rev a2)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0563 (rev a2)
00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0533 (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:04.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
01:04.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
01:04.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 12)
01:04.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
01:04.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

I have tried other distros and found the following:

Mandriva 2008 - same problem
openSUSE 10.3 - reliably boots but poor fonts and other things that irritate

Debian 4.0r1 - reliably boots but no networking detected
Ubuntu 7.10 - RC, reliably boots. 7.10 release, often goes to Busybox
Sabayon 3.4 mini - Reliably boots

oracle_guy · #12 15th November 2007, 06:07 PM

I have an Acer 7520 and am having the same issues. Neither Fedora 7 or 8 work (or mandriva, ubuntu, etc.). You can install, create your partitions, etc. But when it boots it can't mount anything.

I installed Fedora Core 6 and have had no issues however. Spoke to someone who knows about this kind of thing and he said the logical volume manager is to blame in 7 and 8, and that I should manually create the partitions that are necesary to boot and get linux up, and then partition the rest of my drive with the lvm once things are working.

I'll try his idea later, for now I installed Fedora core 6 and am going to use the upgrade option for fedora 8 to see if that fixes my problem.

my_linux · #13 15th November 2007, 08:27 PM

I have not used LVM in my installs just three primary partitions as per my post or am I thinking wrong here and LVM is always active?

sliding · #14 28th January 2008, 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by my_linux

Unfortunately I don't know enough to troubleshoot as well as done in this post but things do seem remarkably similar to the problem I have with Fedora 7 / 8. In my case it is an Acer Aspire 7520 which appears to have very similar hardware as your Compaq.

I have tried other distros and found the following:

Mandriva 2008 - same problem
openSUSE 10.3 - reliably boots but poor fonts and other things that irritate

Debian 4.0r1 - reliably boots but no networking detected
Ubuntu 7.10 - RC, reliably boots. 7.10 release, often goes to Busybox
Sabayon 3.4 mini - Reliably boots

I have an Acer Aspire 7520 T53 and I have openSuse 10.3 running smoothly with good fonts.
The only thing that did not work well was coming to live after I had put it into sleep mode to disk.

I first tried to install Ubuntu, but it failed.
Install with openSuse did go well. I installed it on a second hard drive that I added to this laptop.
Allthough I don't like Vista, I keep it for testing my Delphi apps to run on it.

One thing was weird though. When I tried to run Vista from the Grub menu, it failed.
The Vista entry was wrong
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1
while it should have been:
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1

I partitioned the disk myself and I noticed the first Vista partition was labeled as FAT16 and the 2nd
as NTSF. Strange since both are NTSF. The first partion on the first drive hd0, was marked unknown,
since it's hidden.
After installation, both Windows partition are seen as NTSF.
May be the way Acer did setup the laptop confuses the installation on some distro's?
The laptop definitely needs the nVidia driver for the graphics to get a sharp and nice looking screen,
with 16.7 million colors (depth 24) and 98x99 dots per inch

mlager · #15 29th January 2008, 08:31 PM

At the moment I am running OpenSuse 10.3 on my dad's Acer 7520, and it runs just fine. The thing is, that distro is just very annoying. We retried installing Fedora 8 using the latest spin. Unfortunately I have to report the problems mentioned above still persist. Also retried Ubuntu both 32 and 64 bits and the 'alternate' version. It fails just like Fedora does, only here it says

Code:

begin: Waiting for root file system ...

or something like that.

Anyone else any news on this front?

Quote:

May be the way Acer did setup the laptop confuses the installation on some distro's?

On my own laptop, an Acer 9410, Fedora and Ubuntu installed and run just fine without any problems. It's set up the same way as the 7520 with that 10gb hidden partition.

Regards,

Mark