Re: jessie won't install/boot on a Dell Poweredge R815
On Tue, 21 Jun 2016, Jeffrey Mark Siskind wrote:
> Please note that all of the above systems have / as md0 RAID1. The fresh
> install of jessie was successfull on all but the R815s.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Then it fails to reboot and goes into the initramfs. I have a picture of
> > the screen if anybody wishes.
>
> Yes please. Also please use the 'rescue' boot option which enables
> more verbose logging to the screen.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Here is a screen picture.
Could you upload this to an image paste site or send it along (or use a
serial console to get it as text?)
> I conjecture that the jessie kernel has difficulty accessing the MD
> array on disk. The same problem occurs when I attempt a direct fresh
> install of jessie with the installer.
Which add-in card are you using on the R815s? What does the kernel
output while it is detecting the disks and partitions? Do all of the
drives show up properly? Are the blocksizes correct for the partitions?
When the boot fails, can you read from the underlying block devices? Do
the block devices get detected after the boot fails? Does specifying
delay=20 or similar result in a successful boot?
> Here is what happens that is strange. When I do a fresh install of jessie, one
> of the first things that the installer does is probe for hardware to try to
> find the ISO. I have done this about 10 times. Sometimes (about 3 or 4) it
> succeeds in finding the ISO. Sometimes (the rest) it comes up with a red
> screen and claims that it can't find the ISO. In all cases, I am booting the
> installer from the same USB dongle with the same data on it. I made the dongle
> as follows:
>
> # cd /tmp
> # wget http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie/main/installer-amd64/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz
> # wget http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/8.5.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/firmware-8.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso
> # zcat boot.img.gz >/dev/sdf
> # mount /dev/sdf /mnt
> # cp firmware-8.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso /mnt/.
You can actually just cat firmware-8.5.0-amd64-netinst.iso > /dev/sdf;
> Every time so far, md1 has all 6 components. But md0 has only some of
> the components, sometimes 5/6, sometimes 4/6, and sometimes 1/6. And
> every time it is a different set of components. Even though, just a
> few minutes earlier, I was running wheezy and md0 had all 6
> components. I do
>
> mdadm /dev/md0 --add <each of the missing components one by one>
>
> but it refuses. I forget the error.
The error would be useful to know. Most likely one or more of them
dropped out of the array for some reason and you're booting off of one
which has a lower event count and it won't assemble.
But it could be any number of things.
The output of mdadm --examine /dev/sd[abcdef]1; when md0 fails to
assemble would also be useful.
--
Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com
S: Make me a sandwich
B: What? Make it yourself.
S: sudo make me a sandwich
B: Okay.
-- xkcd http://xkcd.com/c149.html
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