Description of problem: BIOS and Anaconda properly discover and partition the single hard drive (Maxtor 6V200E0 SATA 200GB) but then fail after Exception caused by SATA errors during format. Tried kernel options but did not seem to change anything: acpi=off ide=nodma nodmraid noapic Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): i386 How reproducible: Every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot from FC5 installation DVD 2. In anaconda pick auto or manual disk partitioning 3. Actual results: Exception during mkfs Error: Input/output error during write on /dev/sda Expected results: Format filesystems properly Additional info: Other distros have similar problem however Damn Small Linux 2.3 (DSL 2.3) installed fine. DSL uses a 2.4 Kernel so I guess its another Kernel 2.6 problem ? I have tried to install FC5 on four very different computers so far and failed on all but one ! The hard disk is brand new and seems to slow DSL significantly when the formatting is taking place even on a fast Athlon computer: screen refresshes become slower etc.
The error messages that look most relavent are: <4>ATA: abnormal status 0xD0 on port 0x977, Scsi parity erro <3> ata2: command 0x35 timeout stat 0xd0 host)stat 0x21 The good news is that I discovered that by turning the computer on and off instead of just resetting, and then adding the "nodma" kernel option to the FC5 installation command line ("linux nodma") allowed me to install FC5. After a few more boots and rescues I had a "nodma" kernel option in my grub menu.lst and I was able to boot far enough to run "yum update" (on 24th May 2006) which pulled in the new kernel which supports the specific SATA drivers properly and gives me 65 MB/s on hdparm timed reads. (Kernel 2.4 in DSL without DMA was only able to get 10 MB/s). It seems to be working so far but reset button still needs to be followed by on/off to get a complete boot ...
A new kernel update has been released (Version: 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5) based upon a new upstream kernel release. Please retest against this new kernel, as a large number of patches go into each upstream release, possibly including changes that may address this problem. This bug has been placed in NEEDINFO state. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, if this bug is still in this state in two weeks time, it will be closed. Should this bug still be relevant after this period, the reporter can reopen the bug at any time. Any other users on the Cc: list of this bug can request that the bug be reopened by adding a comment to the bug. In the last few updates, some users upgrading from FC4->FC5 have reported that installing a kernel update has left their systems unbootable. If you have been affected by this problem please check you only have one version of device-mapper & lvm2 installed. See bug 207474 for further details. If this bug is a problem preventing you from installing the release this version is filed against, please see bug 169613. If this bug has been fixed, but you are now experiencing a different problem, please file a separate bug for the new problem. Thank you.
This bug has been mass-closed along with all other bugs that have been in NEEDINFO state for several months. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, this is the only method we have of cleaning out stale bug reports where the reporter has disappeared. If you can reproduce this bug after installing all the current updates, please reopen this bug. If you are not the reporter, you can add a comment requesting it be reopened, and someone will get to it asap. Thank you.