Bug#284933: sarge installer freezes BIOS

[Bogdan Calmac <BCalmac@knoa.com>]

Joey, one more thing,

Is it possible that partman messes up S.M.A.R.T info on the drive and that's
what causes BIOS to hang?

-----Original Message-----
From: Bogdan Calmac 
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 2:06 PM
To: 'Joey Hess'; 284933@bugs.debian.org
Subject: RE: Bug#284933: sarge installer freezes BIOS

Hi Joey,

Thanks for looking into this.

Well, the problem is that once the installer (partman) touches the disk, and
I reboot, the BIOS does not even get to the booting stage, it freezes (I
guess) in the disk detection phase. In other words, if the disk is connected
when I reboot the system freezes immediately and I can't event get in the
BIOS setup. Thus my 'technique' is:

- power off
- disconnect disk
- power on
- go into the BIOS boot menu (just as a pause while I connect the disk)
- connect the disk
- boot from DVD (I cannot boot from the disk here, because the BIOS did not
  detect it)
- go through the setup again, repartition, format, try other options
- reboot (as suggested by the installer)
- the BIOS freezes consistently, go back to the beginning.

Can it be because I used 2.6 in the installer?

Also, note that there is no freeze before the installer does the
partitioning (2 disks sacrificed :-)

If you want more info about the hardware:

motherboard: Intel(r) Desktop Board D848PMB
http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d848pmb/index.htm

disk: Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 60 and 80 GB.

Next step when I'll get home tonight is to partition the disk using the
Maxtor MaxBlast utility and skip the partitioning part of the installer. Do
you have any other ideas?

Bogdan.




-----Original Message-----
From: Joey Hess [mailto:joeyh@debian.org] 
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 1:26 PM
To: Bogdan Calmac; 284933@bugs.debian.org
Subject: Re: Bug#284933: sarge installer freezes BIOS

Bogdan Calmac wrote:
> The base installation goes smooth,
> - kernel 2.6
> - partition the disk in root and swap, use ext3
> - for boot loader I tried both LILO and GRUB
> 
> Now the problem comes after the reboot when I should boot into Linux. The
> system freezes on BIOS startup when it detects the hard drive. In order to
> be able boot I have to (I know it's criminal!) pull the power suply from
the
> disk, boot successfully from the DVD and then plug the power supply for
the
> disk back.

Why do you say you kept booting from the DVD after pulling the plug? Why
didn't you go ahead and let it boot the installed system from disk after
the hard power cycle?

-- 
see shy jo