Bug 59998
| Summary: | RH7.2 installer refuses to see partitions on harddisk; RH6.2 works OK | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Retired] Red Hat Linux | Reporter: | Ed Voncken <redhat-bugzilla> |
| Component: | anaconda | Assignee: | Jeremy Katz <katzj> |
| Status: | CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE | QA Contact: | Mike McLean <mikem> |
| Severity: | medium | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | medium | ||
| Version: | 7.2 | CC: | pdh |
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | i686 | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
| Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | 2003-10-23 19:56:22 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: | |||
| Bug Depends On: | |||
| Bug Blocks: | 61901, 67218, 79579, 100644 | ||
If you go to tty2 during the install and run parted on your drive and run 'print' , what does it show for the drive? I ran the following commands: # parted /dev/hda print Error: Could not stat device /dev/hda - No such file or directory. Retry Cancel? # fdisk /dev/hda Unable to open /dev/hda It appears the device entry does not even exist (ls -l /dev confirms this). When looking under /proc, it seems that the kernel DOES know about the drive: # cat /proc/ide/hda/model FUJITSU MPB3064ATU # cat /proc/ide/hda/driver ide-driver version 1.10 # cat /proc/ide/hda/geometry physical 4092/16/64 logical 256/255/64 Strange; has the installer changed so dramatically since RH6.2? Could it be that the ide-driver forgets to register the device under /dev ? Greetings, Ed. The installer doesn't create all of the device nodes (it creates them on the fly as it uses them). You can just run `mknod /dev/hda` and it will create it correctly for you and then run parted. Hrmm, no copy & paste for me ;) # mknod /dev/hda # parted /dev/hda print Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk! # fdisk -l /dev/hda Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 256 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes /dev/hda1 * 1 447 0b /dev/hda2 448 496 82 /dev/hda3 497 788 83 Obviously fdisk / parted see the disk as C/H/S = 256/255/63. What puzzles me is that RH62 install does allow me to proceed, while RH72 install bombs out. I guess that if the RH72 installer allowed me to run fdisk anyway (and let me set the CHS manually), installation would be possible. Greetings, Ed. As of Red Hat Linux 7.2, we use parted as our partitioning backend instead of libfdisk... Any idea what's gonna happen next? Greetings, Ed. Hi Folks, I also have a very similar problem. I'm trying to upgrade from RH7.0 to RH7.2 and the install sequence fails. Fdisk crashes the install, whereas disk druid gives me the message "The partition table on device hda was unreadable." If, at the point of failure I switch to a console window and enter fdisk /dev/hda it is unable to open /dev/hda. However, from the console window, I am able to mount hda partitions manually - but unable to continue with the installation. My disk is (IBM-DJNA-351520-(PM) and partitions are as follows: pri hda1 msdos log hda5 msdos log hda6 msdos log hda7 msdos log hda8 /boot of 16MB Linux format pri hda3 /swap of 196MB Linux swap format pri hda4 / of remainder of about 15 MB. It is setup as a dual boot disk using LILO boot record on the MBR to boot into Windows NT or Linux 7.0. It works perfectly. I can run the Linux 7.0 installation CD and it recognises all my partitions. I have tried replacing the drive with a Western Digital which installs RH7.2 perfectly - apparently eliminating causes outside of hda. CONCLUSION -------------------- I believe the hard disk driver is OK because I am able to mount the existing partitions manually when install fails. I suspect that both fdisk and diskdruid are failing to read my partition table due to their own bugs or lack of versatility. My partitions are good because they boot up into NT4 and RH7.0, also from RH7.0 install CD. I expect the upgrade installation of RH7.2 CD would proceed reasonably if only fdisk or diskdruid would allow it to. Disk Druid and/or fdisk seem to have regressed since version 7.0. Is there a workround - e.g. to skip the diskdruid/fdisk part of install? Hope this helps. Peter I've solved the problem folks. It seems that RH6.2 created an error in my partition table, an error which it was tollerant of! When I run RH7.2 that it fails to recognise /dev/hda, instead of reporting (or tollerating) faulty partion table. I've used parted to correct the problem, and all is OK now. Many thank for contributions of others in this bug report. Peter. Oh, the troubles I had getting this problem fixed! There are so many bugzilla reports that could have been something to do with it. I can't be sure of all the details now - I considered it a one off so didn't make my own notes. The breakthrough came for me when I tried the following commands. When the installation failed, I was able to switch to console Ctrl Alt F2 and enter the following commands as advised in bug 59998. # mknod /dev/hda # parted /dev/hda print # fdisk -l /dev/hda The parted command gave me a rude message but the fdisk command showed my partiton table. On very, very close inspection I noticed an error in the table. Two of my partitions were overlapping. It must have been RH6.2 that did this to me. RH6.2 did not mind the overlap, even on reinstallation. I must have used fdisk to fix the overlap and then tested that parted could see my partitions as expected. Sorry, I think I misled you to believe I fixed it with parted, when it was really fdisk. Hope this helps. Make sure you let me know if you need more detail. Regards, Peter. i had a similar problem, but with a different solution. in my case, the partitions weren't seen at all by the 7.2 installer.. this was due to some sort of crippled BIOS (aic7xxx) drivers. running the install using login of type: linux apic ..made all the bad stuff go away. only took us a combined 8 hours to come up with those magic 4 characters! hope that helps. martyrampton, I know you're trying to help, but 'linux apic' isn't the solution to every problem. Please run the following on VC2: # mknod /dev/hda # echo -e "x\np" | fdisk /dev/hda > fdisk.out insert a DOS formatted floppy in your floppy drive # mcopy fdisk.out a: and attach the file. Closing due to inactivity, please reopen if you have any additional information. As requested by msw, I got the following partition info after running the RH 7.2 installer: Command (m for help): Expert command (m for help): Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 256 cylinders Nr AF Hd Sec Cyl Hd Sec Cyl Start Size ID 1 80 1 1 0 254 63 446 63 7180992 0b 2 00 0 1 447 254 63 495 7181055 787185 82 3 00 0 1 496 254 63 787 7968240 4690980 83 4 00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 Expert command (m for help): Expert command (m for help): Expert command (m for help): Reproduced the same problem on RedHat 7.3; fdisk output as requested by msw also reproduced on RH 7.3: Command (m for help): Expert command (m for help): Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 256 cylinders Nr AF Hd Sec Cyl Hd Sec Cyl Start Size ID 1 80 1 1 0 254 63 446 63 7180992 0b 2 00 0 1 447 254 63 495 7181055 787185 82 3 00 0 1 496 254 63 787 7968240 4690980 83 4 00 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 Expert command (m for help): Expert command (m for help): Expert command (m for help): This should be better in our current codebase. |
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:0.9.7) Gecko/20011221 Description of problem: Harddisk (Fujitsu MPB3064ATU) was repartitioned, Windows 98 installed. Remainder of disk was left unallocated at first. RedHat 7.2 installer (Custom installation) aborts on every option to review/create partitions on this disk (tried automatic, disk druid and fdisk). See below for error message. Toms Root/Boot disk has no problems viewing the partitions and partitioning this drive (regardless of the strange geometry the disk reports). Swap and Ext2 partitions were created to fill the disk. RedHat 6.2 installer works perfectly, sees the partitions and wants to proceeed. RedHat 7.2 installer still aborts with fatal error. This appears to be a regression from RedHat Linux 6.2 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start RedHat Linux 7.2 installer from CDROM 2. Accept defaults, choose Custom installation 3. Try to partition the harddisk --> installer aborts with fatal error. Actual Results: Error message: "The partition table on device hda was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on this drive. Would you like to initialize this drive?" Expected Results: Proceed as usual, or at least give me the option to manually override the geometry. Unfortunately, this is considered 'too expert' for 'expert' mode... Additional info: Machine: - ASUS P2L97-S mainboard with onboard SCSI (aic7xxx) - 433MHz Intel Celeron CPU - 384MB RAM - CDROM Plextor Ultraplex SCSI - CDR Plextor Plexwriter 412C SCSI - Harddisk IDE Fujitsu MPB3064ATU Geometry (BIOS) 788/255/63 Geometry (Linux) 256/255/63 Machine was repartitioned, Windows 98 installed. Partition table: part start end hda1 1 447 0b Win98 Remainder of disk was left unallocated at first. RedHat 7.2 installer (Custom installation) aborts on every option to review/create partitions on this disk (tried automatic, disk druid and fdisk) with the following error message: "The partition table on device hda was unreadable. To create new partitions it must be initialized, causing the loss of ALL DATA on this drive. Would you like to initialize this drive?" Of course, I selected "No" and the installer aborted with a fatal error. Several attempts were made, even by switching to a console before entering the "partitioning" part of the installer. fdisk reported that it could not open the device and quit. Next, I tried Toms Root/Boot floppy. No problems; fdisk read the disk just fine, and I created partitions after overriding the Cylinder count in fdisk (menu x->c 788). Partition info: part start end hda1 1 447 0b Win98 hda2 448 496 82 swap hda3 497 788 83 Linux native RedHat Linux 7.2 installer still refused to work with this harddisk and offered me no way of overriding this behaviour. It doesn't give an explanation of the exact nature of the problem. I'm *GUESSING* it has to do with the geometry that is reported by the disk (256/255/63 instead of the 788/255/63 value used for LBA). Next, I tried the RedHat Linux 6.2 installer. To my surprise, it had no problems whatsoever with my configuration (after all, Windows 98 runs just fine on it). Impact: Cannot install RedHat Linux 7.2 on this machine. This is a very unfortunate regression from RedHat Linux 6.2.