Bug 52485

Summary: Installer hangs at partition check
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Bill Montana <montanab>
Component: kernelAssignee: Arjan van de Ven <arjanv>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.1CC: dixitamol
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2004-09-30 15:39:08 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Bill Montana 2001-08-24 05:17:51 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.72 [en]C-{C-UDP; EBM-Fujitsu1}  (Win98; U)

Description of problem:
I'm trying to install 7.1 as an upgrade to 6.1 using the hard disk installation method. Linux loads and begins to probe the hardware. It hangs 
during the partition check. I have tried using hda=noprobe as well as hda=nodma. Using the noprobe option, the installation progresses but 
thinks there are no hard disks in the system. Nodma has no effect. Here are the startup messages from the point of probing IDE:

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
VP_IDE: chipset revision 6
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: VIA vt82c586a (rev 25) IDE UDMA33 controller on pci00:07.1
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0x6000-0x6007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0x6008-0x600f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: Maxtor 52049U4, ATA DISK drive
hdd: BCD-24XHM CD-ROM, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 40020624 sectors (20491 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=2491/255/63, UDMA(33)
Partition check:
 hda:<hang>


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot from boot disk (boot.img)
2. Wait
3.
	

Actual Results:  System hangs

Expected Results:  Installation should continue

Additional info:

Pentium 200, 64Mb RAM, Maxtor 20Gb hard drive

Comment 1 Arjan van de Ven 2001-08-24 21:38:07 UTC
hda=nodma doesn't do a thing; it's "ide=nodma"; could you try that ?

Comment 2 Bill Montana 2001-08-26 04:56:47 UTC
it's "ide=nodma"; could you try that ?; Yes, that is what I meant (I tried it again, anyway).

Comment 3 Arjan van de Ven 2001-08-26 13:33:50 UTC
Strange. Weird question: does it happen too if you connect your CDROM to the
same cable as the disk ? It appears that your CDROM is currently a slave on a
cable without master.....



Comment 4 Bill Montana 2001-08-31 17:42:43 UTC
does it happen too if you connect your CDROM to the same cable as the disk? ; It would not boot at all with the CD-ROM connected using the same 
cable as the disk. So, I disconnected the CD-ROM altogether and got the same results as before. It hangs at the partition check. Sometimes it 
shows a few partitions and sometimes it does not before hanging.

Comment 5 Bill Montana 2001-08-31 17:48:55 UTC
I noticed in the BIOS that the disk is in LBA mode. Is this ok? Should it be in Normal or Large mode? If I change it to a different mode, will data loss 
occur?

Comment 6 Arjan van de Ven 2001-09-06 08:53:56 UTC
Bios settings are irrelevant other that for getting LILO and the first few "....
 in teh kernel boot.

My guess REALLY is that either the cable is daft, or that the drive is jumpered
incorrectly, given that putting the CDROM on the same cable makes it worse.
Also, if it's a 80 ribbon cable, the master has a FIXED place on the IDE cable,
eg the endpoint.

Comment 7 Bill Montana 2001-09-07 03:56:45 UTC
given that putting the CDROM on the same cable makes it worse ; I had inadvertantly plugged the cable on the CD-ROM drive backwards. Anyway, disconnecting the CD-ROM drive completely did not change things either.

Also, if it's a 80 ribbon cable, the master has a FIXED place on the IDE cable ; the hard drive IS on the end of the IDE cable.

The drive is jumpered correctly (as Master/Single).

RH 6.1 installed to this hard drive without any problems (and with the CD-ROM as a slave on the other IDE controller).

Comment 8 Bill Montana 2001-10-09 19:28:36 UTC
It seems this is not an installer problem, but that RH 7.1 and my Maxtor drive 
are incompatible with one another. I disconnected the Maxtor drive and installed 
RH 7.1 on another drive, which went well. When I reconnected the Maxtor drive 
the RH 7.1 would not boot. It hangs at the partition check for hdb (the Maxtor 
drive). I guess I will have to buy another drive to replace the perfectly 
good Maxtor drive.

Any ideas about how to get this drive to work? I did a workstation install of RH 
6.1 on it about a year ago.

Comment 9 amol dixit 2004-02-01 07:24:37 UTC
hi,
having same problem "instn stops at partn chk".
new laptop (HP ze5500 series), blank hdd...RH8 halts.
pls suggest a remedy.
Thanks,
Amol
(dixitamol)

Comment 10 mostafa berg 2004-04-27 13:48:28 UTC
Hi !!

I HAvE THE SAME PROBLEEEMM !!!:'(
well i tried all u said didnt work , although i had linux installed 
on the same machine and i didnt change anything but adding a CD 
writer on an other IDE CABLE , i disconnected it , but that didnt 
work 
i disconneect the HARD disk , and the installation went fine !
im going maad !

any ideas? i've reset my mobo and that didnt help !

i dont know what changed !

Comment 11 Bugzilla owner 2004-09-30 15:39:08 UTC
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of
the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem
persists.

The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, 
and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in
the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/