Description of problem: Anaconda as distributed with FC5 has problems with VT6420 SATA controller on both x86-64 and i386. How reproducible: Start FC5 installation process. At the stage where hard disks are detected before partitioning, Anaconda fails to detects my two SATA drives (ST3200826AS) separately, but shows a single device /dev/mapper/via_chghhejjca Anaconda repeatedly shows the message: Invalid partition table on /dev/mapper/via_chghhejjca -- wrong signature 2150 Switching to a virtual console to view dmesg output shows that the kernel has detected the controller and hard drives correctly, and that the partition table has been read and /dev nodes assigned for the partitions. Finally, anaconda fails complaining that no suitable medium exists for installation, and reboots the system. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot from FC5 installation CD 2. Wait Additional info: dmesg and lspci output from FC4 running on the same hardware are attached (kernel 2.6.17-1.2142_FC4 x86_64).
Created attachment 133019 [details] dmesg output
Created attachment 133020 [details] lspci output
Does booting with 'linux nodmraid' help?
Works perfectly -- thank you very much for your (extraordinarily) prompt reply. Can I please suggest that this is either fixed, or the workaround added to the release notes in the next release?
You've set this drive up as a RAID in your BIOS, and anaconda is reading that data and behaving accordingly. The RAID metadata needs to be removed in BIOS prior to installation if you don't want to use it.
The VT6420 has two mutually exclusive operating modes: RAID controller and simple SATA controller. These modes are switchable in my BIOS. When I initially installed the system, I configured the drives as a RAID array. However, when I tried to install with FC4, I was forced to reconfigure them into simple SATA mode because FC4 had no support for the VT6420 in RAID mode -- only the Windows XP drivers supported it. Reading documentation, it seems to me that the observed failure arises from having RAID disabled in the BIOS while dmraid (correctly) detects stale metadata, leading to anaconda trying to read from a non-existent array. Is there anyway that the installation system could be made to handle this situation without crashing with obscure error messages? Request reopen (I'll resubmit a slightly different report if you like).