Topic: Installation hangs on a Asus Vintage PH1

[ngomes]

Hi,

This is my first experience with SME 7 (pre3).

# First my hardware specs:
- Asus Vintage PH1
- 1 x Samsung HDD SV0844D ATA/66 8.4GB
- 1 x Sony DVD Recorder DRU-810A
- 1 x NIC Edimax WOL 10/100 (RTL 8139D)
- 1 x Celeron D 330J (2.66 GHz, 533 FSB, LGA775)
- Onboard IDE Operate Mode = Enhanced Mode
- Enhanced Mode Support On = SATA Mode

(Note: after installing I will try to add an extra SATA hdd).

# My problem:
I am trying a CD install but the installation hangs totally on "Formatting /boot file system..." at 92%.

Any suggestions? Someone help me?

Thanks in advanced,
Nuno

[Jáder]

1st Try to change your HDD (being 8 GB is a OLD one!)

Later try to watch what happens in other screens (CTRL+ALT+F2~5) to see any error messages. An HDD error will show in one of them.

Good luck.

Jáder

[ngomes]

Hi Jader,

1st Try to change your HDD (being 8 GB is a OLD one!)

Yes it is. But I think this is enough to run a SME 7 base install. The data will be located on another hdd disk (120GB).

Later try to watch what happens in other screens (CTRL+ALT+F2~5) to see any error messages. An HDD error will show in one of them.

Nothing happens on the other console screens. It totally hangs the barebone.

Nuno[/quote]

[ngomes]

As a side note I managed to install SME 6.0.1 sucessfully today on this machine (apart from the extra SATA hdd).

So this hardware is all ok.

[Jáder]

Hi Gomes

Try to disable EVERYTHING on BIOS you really do not need.
I´ll start with:
ACPI (maybe change it to APM)
USB ports (disable them)

Once I have problems to install 5.6 in a ASUS mobo because of those items.

Good luck

Jáder

[ngomes]

Hi Jader and all,

Try to disable EVERYTHING on BIOS you really do not need.
I´ll start with:
ACPI (maybe change it to APM)

Tried this with no luck.

USB ports (disable them)

I can't see what the USB ports can do with base SME 7 base install but I will try this anyway...

Anyway, I found 2 related bugs on bugzilla:
- Formatting takes 10 minutes
- Installation hangs (Sony CDU-611F)

Both are marked with a RESOLVED status and a WONTFIX resolution. I am studying them. Are there anyone with the same problems?

Regards,
Nuno[/quote]

[ngomes]

A newbie question about SME 7 (sorry):

Is it mandatory to have 2 hdd's to install SME7 (aka: to build a software raid1)?

Nuno

[ngomes]

Hi all,

From the SME 7 Features wiki page:

Hard Disk improvements

* Automated installation as RAID
* 1 disk: One-way RAID1 mirror
* 2 disks: Two-way RAID1 mirror
* 3-5 disks: RAID5
* 6+ disks: RAID6

What is a One-way RAID1 mirror (1 disk only)?

Nuno

[JonB]

Nuno,

With a single disk it installs as single disk raid i.e your 8.4GB H/D is in reality only a 4.2GB disk.

Have you tried running a disk scan on the HD. You may find that you have bad sectors towards the end of the drive.

Jon

[gregswallow]

With a single disk it installs as single disk raid i.e your 8.4GB H/D is in reality only a 4.2GB disk.

No, with one disk it installs as a broken raid setup using the whole 8.4GB.  It is ready to accept an identical 8.4GB drive that you could add later.


On the main subject, if you have a SATA hard drive, I'm guessing 80+GB, you should use that as the main drive, not an 8.4GB drive.

[JonB]

Greg,

Has this changed from pre1 because when I installed pre1 on a single disk

#df

only reported half the physical size of the disk. This was also confirmed by a colleague who had installed pre1 on a single disk.

I will confirm this tomorrow, as I still have that server set up.

Jon

[JonB]

My apologies, it was my stuff up. I thought I had used a 36.7 SCSI drive in the test server but I had grabbed an 18.2 instead. No wonder it only read half of what I expected it too.  

There needs to be a foot in mouth emoticon.

Jon

[ngomes]

Have you tried running a disk scan on the HD. You may find that you have bad sectors towards the end of the drive.

No, I haven't any bad sectors => tested with badblocks and returned nothing.

Anyway the 8GB disk is my testing one. When I sell a new hardware and have the time I usually test some linux distros (basically SME Server and IPCop) on this disk. Before SME7pre3 I tested SME6.0.1 with this barebone and disk and all went smoothly.

Because this machine will be my new "all-in-one" server here is my final hardware configuration concerning disks and optical devices:
- 1 x HDD ATA/100 40GB
- 1 x DVD Recorder
- 3 x HDD SATA 120GB for office data built as a software RAID5.

I will test tomorrow SME7pre3 booting from a normal CD-ROM and installing on the final 40GB ATA disk and will report back.

Regards,
Nuno

[ngomes]

I will test tomorrow SME7pre3 booting from a normal CD-ROM and installing on the final 40GB ATA disk and will report back.

Just to report that SME7 was sucessfully installed onto a SEAGATE ATA/100 40GB using a SAMSUNG CD-ROM.

Seems to me that SONY recorders break SME7 installations.

Nuno