Fedora 11 bricks server unless BIOS changed from AHCI to IDE EMULATION

MyDogHasFleas · #1 10th June 2009, 02:23 AM

Server has DQ35JO board, 8GB memory, multiple SATA hard drives. It was happily running Fedora 10, and Fedora 9 before that.

I downloaded and burned the F11 DVD, booted it, did an install which is:

-- delete the LVMs
-- create a 200 MB /boot on ext3, the rest of /dev/sda on ext3 as /
-- reformat the swap partition on /dev/sdb1
-- leave the other file systems alone (they are all ext3)

I chose no optional packages and let it install. It finished normally and got to the "click to reboot" screen.

Now, my server is completely bricked. When I power it up I get a blank screen with a blinking cursor. I cannot even get to the BIOS, or boot my Fedora DVD, much less boot the boot drive.

Help???

MyDogHasFleas · #2 10th June 2009, 04:45 AM

Update: The server is not totally bricked. If I physically disconnect the SATA drives, it will boot, let me get into the BIOS via F2, and will boot a CD/DVD.

If I connect even one SATA drive, the server simply hangs with a blinking cursor at boot. This is even though I have the DVD drive set to boot first, and I have a bootable DVD in the drive. It won't even let me get into the BIOS. It does not show the Intel splash screen that says "F2 to enter BIOS setup".

???????????? help ?????????????? any suggestions how to proceed?

MyDogHasFleas · #3 10th June 2009, 05:03 AM

Update 2: I've got it working, but there is a very, very, very bad bug in Fedora 11 installation.

I got it working by (a) disconnecting the SATA drives so that I could get into the BIOS, (b) changing the SATA setting from AHCI to IDE emulation, (c) reconnecting the SATA drive. Then it would boot normally and go through my Fedora 11 setup steps.

Note: I installed Fedora with the SATA drives set to AHCI mode!!! This is the same way I installed Fedora 10, and it was fine. Fedora 11 installs fine with the SATA drives in AHCI mode, but then it won't reboot! Furthermore, at least on my system, I couldn't even get into the BIOS. It appeared the system was totally bricked.

scottro · #4 10th June 2009, 10:07 AM

Thanks for sharing. When things calm down a little, probably worth searching bugzilla to see if there are more reports on this. I'm going to change the thread title so that others who run into the issue find it. more easily.

I haven't seen anyone else mention this one, and I suspect a lot of people leave it at AHCI, so it might be one of those Just You type bugs--I hate those, with the low end hardware I often use, I get them a lot.

(Not saying you're using lowend hardware, just that I haven't seen other mention of this one yet.)

MyDogHasFleas · #5 10th June 2009, 04:23 PM

thanks Scott for changing the forum title, this will avoid negative reaction.

as far as "low end hardware" -- it is a white box PC that I built from a new-ish Intel desktop board (DQ35JO) with an Intel E6850 3Ghz Core 2 CPU. It has 8GB of RAM and 5 SATA drives. The boot drive is a Western Digital Raptor 10K RPM 70GB drive. I have one 300GB and three 750GB drives, all Seagate.

I would think the board/CPU is a pretty common configuration, and that is what seems to trigger the issue. As I said, all was well with Fedora 9 and 10, so this is a regression.

I searched Bugzilla and didn't find anything. I opened bug 504937 against anaconda last night. It was assigned this morning to anaconda/mkinitrd.

scottro · #6 10th June 2009, 10:45 PM

Ah, I just meant that some of *MY* stuff is lowend, which is why I'll run into various Just Me(TM) problems, I didn't mean you.

As you can probably see, with the new release the forums are really busy--it might be a few days before someone with an idea answers your post, but hopefully, someone will--I reiterate that I think you're posting of your solution will help others.

MyDogHasFleas · #7 22nd June 2009, 09:33 PM

RESOLVED. I cannot reproduce the behavior now and Fedora 11 is installing fine.

I fixed it by (1) upleveling the BIOS and (2) deleting all partitions on the hard drive and re-doing the install.

It's one of two things that caused this.

1) Downlevel BIOS which I upgraded. (I don't think it's this.,)

2) I had the boot drive on SATA port 1. I switched it to SATA port 0.

Or it could have just been something transient.