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New install 5.6 'hangs' during boot

Jason Judge

New install 5.6 'hangs' during boot
« on: March 29, 2003, 04:04:20 PM »
I am installing SME 5.6 (developer version) onto a new machine. It all seems to go fine until it reboots into Linux for the first time. During the services startup, it appears to hang at the 'creating file quotas' stage. It has been like this for almost 24 hours now, but I don't want to kill it in case it is just slow configuring the filesystem for the first time.

There is disk activity several times each minute, but the keyboard is locked out completely. SMART is disabled, so I'm fairly sure it's not that accessing the disks.

The setup consists of a P4 1.8GHz, 512M RAM, SiS651C chipset and two 120G hard disks configured as a software RAID. The same happens if I only use one disk. The latest BIOS is installed, and the disks are recognised and formatted successfuly.

The video blanking has kicked in now, and with the keyboard locked out I can't bring the screen back to see if it is actually doing anything. Any ideas?

-- Jason

Mike

Re: New install 5.6 'hangs' during boot
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2003, 12:38:30 AM »
I have installed 5.6 dev on a Pentium III 500 with 128Mb RAM and 200Gb drive and it sure did not take a day to work.
I do not know anymore how long it took but I am sure that it took much less than 1 hour. On a P4 with 512Mb of RAM is should fly.
My guess is that he has problems with the IDE-controller.
I have had similar problems trying to get a HighPoint HPT366 and later on a HighPoint RocketRaid 404 working.
Both are not supported by the E-Smith.
Installed a E-Smith box on an old 33MB/s IDE and later on connected it to the previously mentioned controllers.
The funny thing is that the box starts booting normally but than somehow will try to switch to a the specifik IDE-controller.
You will get a message like "Kernel Panic"

Try installing it on an older Pentium 2 or 3 on just 1 of the 120Gb disks.
Make sure it boots normal on that one.
Than put the harddisk the P4 again and see what happens.
If the hardware is not supported you will probably get the same "Kernel Panic" message.
Linux detects the hardware at boottime and that's why you can just swith the disk to another PC as long as the hardware of that PC is supported by the Linux Kernel.
5.6 has one of the latest Kernels so it should support most of the modern hardware. It was a big step up from version 5.5 which uses an older kernel version.

Jason Judge

Re: New install 5.6 'hangs' during boot
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2003, 12:55:44 AM »
Thanks for those tips Mike. My guess is it's the IDE controller - I'll check the compatibility list. I'm just using the motherboard controllers though, but it's not a hassel to fit an IDE card.

It's still hanging there, BTW, getting on for 36 hours later. Time to turn it off, I think. I may try a standard Redhat or SuSE install on the machine, to see if there are any clues when that installs.

-- Jason

Mike

Re: New install 5.6 'hangs' during boot
« Reply #3 on: March 30, 2003, 01:12:40 AM »
Suse worked with me too with those HighPoint controllers but I never got them running on an E-Smith box, not even on 5.6

Jason Judge

Re: New install 5.6 'hangs' during boot
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2003, 01:40:10 AM »
The M/B is a ASUS P4SC-E and uses the Southbridge SiS962L controller. At least if I can find a driver that works, then there is a chance to create a custom install.

-- JJ