Bug#235418: Various blocking problems installing on a RAID server -- d-i snapshot of 23/02/2004
Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version: sarge-i386-netinst.iso
uname -a: 2.4.24-1-686-smp
Date: 2004-02-25
Method: network
Machine: Custom made server with LSI Logic RAID Controller
Processor: Pentium IV 3.2Ghz, hypertreading enabled
Memory: 2Gb
Root Device: HW RAID /dev/sda1
Root Size/partition table:
Disk /dev/sda: 73.4 GB, 73406611456 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 8924 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 486 3903763+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 487 729 1951897+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 730 8924 65826337+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/hda: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 30515 245111706 83 Linux
Output of lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82875P Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82875P Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801EB LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801EB Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801EB SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c940 1000Base? (rev 12)
02:0a.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller 4 (rev 01)
02:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. Ethernet 100/10 MBit (rev 40)
Output of lspci -n:
00:00.0 Class 0600: 8086:2578 (rev 02)
00:01.0 Class 0604: 8086:2579 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 Class 0604: 8086:244e (rev c2)
00:1f.0 Class 0601: 8086:24d0 (rev 02)
00:1f.1 Class 0101: 8086:24db (rev 02)
00:1f.3 Class 0c05: 8086:24d3 (rev 02)
01:00.0 Class 0300: 1002:5159
02:05.0 Class 0200: 10b7:1700 (rev 12)
02:0a.0 Class 0104: 1000:1960 (rev 01)
02:0c.0 Class 0200: 1282:9102 (rev 40)
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [E]
Config network: [/]
Detect CD: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [/]
Partition hard drives: [O]
Create file systems: [O]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Install boot loader: [O]
Reboot: [E]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
I added the special symbol "/" that means that it partially worked,
or not optimally.
Comments/Problems:
1) I have a davicom network card, the system used the "tulip" driver
for it, but it didn't work since the right driver is "dmfe".
This is valid during the install phase as well as on the newly
installed system, i.e.: discover use the wrong driver for the net card.
2) During the install, the installer nicely prompted me to choose the
network card between eth0 and eth1, but I had no clue to which one was
what. It would be _very_ helpful if it was possible to have some more
info like the driver used, the pci slot or something else. Ideally,
understanding the pci channel used, it should be possible to know
if the network card is the integraded one or on a pci slot. That
would be great to know.
3) In a similar way, when grub asks on which device to install, I'm
totally blind on knowing if hd0 is the ide this and hd1 the raid one
or viceversa. Having some more informations like the size of the disk,
the name, etc could be very helpful, and I would say, necessary.
In my case, for example, I need to install the system on the RAID disk
of course, b/c the ide one is just used for backup and as scratch.
4) It turned out that I correctly guessed the name of the raid device
(hd1), so the boot loader was installed on the correct disk.
The problem is that after the boot, the names was reversed and hd0 was
the raid disk, while hd1 was the ide disk. Fortunately, thanks to grub,
I can alter the boot options on the fly and I could boot the system,
change the menu.lst file and generate a correct device map for grub.
This is definitely a thing that an end user would have difficulties to
understand...
5) Discover correctly loads the piix module for the ide controller, but
loads it _after_ ide-detect and this is wrong, for two reasons:
- on kernels 2.4.x that works but the disk are used without DMA and
so are so slow to be almost unusable. See below with problems with
related problems with hdparm
- on kernels 2.6.x that does not work b/c the ide-detect module keeps
the irq of the controller and the piix driver can't even start
6) hdparm is unable to set disk parameters during the boot because the
IDE drivers are loaded by discover _after_ hdparm starts, so hdparm
finds no ide drives on the systems and aborts
7) the installation correctly uses the "megaraid2" driver for my raid
controller but the driver "megaraid" is not used on the initrd image,
so, after the reboot, the old and limited driver is used on the system
instead.
That's all for now, thanks for your work and don't esitate to ask me
details if they are needed, but pls mail me directly since I'm not
subscribed to the list.
Alessandro Polverini
nibbles.it
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