Bug#308277: Adventures on a PR440FX System
Package: installation-reports
uname -a: Linux battlefield 2.4.28p1-battlefield-3 #1 SMP Tue Apr 5 17:33:41 PDT 2005 i686 unknown
Debian-installer-version: sarge-rc3-cdimage-netinst (30 Mar 2005)
Date: Sat Apr 1 15:00:00 PDT 2005
Method: CDROM /dev/sr0 (aic7880u)
Machine: Intel PR440FX (aic7880u builtin, piix3 builtin, hpt366 add-on)
Processor: 2xPPro 200MHz
Memory: 192MB
Root Device: /dev/hdg (hpt366), /dev/sdc (aic7880u)
Root Size/partition table: /dev/hdg1:4GB, /dev/sdc1:1.5GB
Output of lspci and lspci -n:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
00:06.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371SB PIIX3 USB [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
00:09.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7880U
00:0f.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT366 / HPT370 (rev 01)
00:0f.1 Unknown mass storage controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT366 / HPT370 (rev 01)
00:13.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86c868 [Vision 868 VRAM] vers 0
00:00.0 Class 0600: 8086:1237 (rev 02)
00:06.0 Class 0200: 8086:1229 (rev 02)
00:07.0 Class 0601: 8086:7000 (rev 01)
00:07.1 Class 0101: 8086:7010
00:07.2 Class 0c03: 8086:7020 (rev 01)
00:09.0 Class 0100: 9004:8078
00:0f.0 Class 0180: 1103:0004 (rev 01)
00:0f.1 Class 0180: 1103:0004 (rev 01)
00:13.0 Class 0300: 5333:8880
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [ ]
Detect CD: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [E]
Partition hard drives: [ ]
Create file systems: [O]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Install boot loader: [O]
Reboot: [E]
Comments/Problems:
This was not a new installation, but using the rc3-netinst sarge
CDROM/installer as a rescue disk. The goal was to restore an image of a
system that had a hardware failure onto replacement hardware.
The role of rescue disk isn't a commonly tested scenario, but it is a
very important one. This does mean some of the things I ran into are
unlikely to be encountered in common usage. Some of them though very
definitely will be encountered in normal usage.
I chose the netinst image for this purpose. I only needed a few baseline
tools, not an entire installation. Therefore I figured the netinst image
would have everything required for this task. (and I had a Knoppix disk
as a fallback)
The first severe problem I ran into was attempting to install onto an
UDMA66 disk attached to the HPT366 controller. Turns out that though
these components are nominally capable of operating at the UDMA66 rate,
it is unreliable (perhaps unusable would be more accurate) at this speed.
Unfortunately the sarge-rc3 installer loaded the driver in such a way
that DMA was enabled on this drive/controller. `hdparm` wasn't present on
the CD closing this avenue to disabling DMA. As a reault a direct
installation onto /dev/sdg1 was impossible on this hardware.
Next an installation onto /dev/sdc1 was done. For the most part this
pretty well worked. The BIOS did want to boot from /dev/hdg1, but that
disk/controller did work sufficiently well with UDMA66 enabled to allow
the installation of the boot block. On reboot even though it was found
and visible during installation, /dev/hdg was completely inaccessible.
After a lot of searching I discovered that this was apparently due to the
creation of a flawed /etc/modules file. ide-detect was at the top of the
modules file, while hpt366 was at the bottom of the file.
Finally, for the purpose of rescue disk there are two crucial tools
missing. Specifically `restore`, and `bzip2`. With filesystems becoming
larger it is exceedingly likely that folks will use bzip2 and its better
ratio for backups. Others are welcome to make their own choice of backup
tool, Debian should not discriminate against me for the perfectly
reasonable decision to use dump.
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