Core 6 installation hangs raid problem?

[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

[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.