Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 213989
Installation of FC6 hangs at point "Searching for Fedora Core installations"
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:47 EST
Description of problem: I have tested the DVD iso I downloaded. The SHA1SUM and testing it when booting from the disk show the iso as being a valid Fedora Core 6 DVD. I have tried to run the install with all of the following options at the prompt: <Enter> linux linux reiserfs selinux=0 inux reiserfs selinux=0 ide=nodma linux reiserfs selinux=0 acpi=off linux reiserfs selinux=0 text linux selinux=0 linux rescue (you will see below why I did this one) No matter which of the above options I use, the installer will freeze 10-15 after the "Searching for Fedora Core installations" dialog box appears. I currently have FC5 (amongst other distros) installed on this system. So I thought to myself what would happen if I tried to install FC5. I went with: linux reiserfs selinux=0 At the "Searching for Fedora Core installations" the following error message pops up: Error mounting file system on hdd8: Operation not supported The same error occurs for sda12 and sda13. Interestingly hdd8, sda12, sda13 and sda14 are part of LVM. What was also of interest is that the error message did not pop up for sda14. The same happens when I boot of the FC5 DVD and run: linux rescue. [root:~#] pvscan PV /dev/sda14 VG Home lvm2 [32.88 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/sda13 VG Store lvm2 [30.00 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/hdd8 VG Store lvm2 [30.31 GB / 0 free] PV /dev/sda12 VG Games lvm2 [39.99 GB / 0 free] Total: 4 [133.18 GB] / in use: 4 [133.18 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ] I have a suspicion this might have something to do with the SATA drive (ST3250620AS) and/or the fact that the LVM spans across the SATA and IDE drive. For completeness sake I will also include the output of fdisk l [root:~#] fdisk -l Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 9963 80027766 7 HPFS/NTFS Disk /dev/hdd: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 158816 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdd1 * 1 31222 15735636 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/hdd2 31222 158816 64307565+ 5 Extended /dev/hdd5 31222 62444 15735636 83 Linux /dev/hdd6 62444 93665 15735636 83 Linux /dev/hdd7 93665 95753 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hdd8 95754 158816 31783718+ 83 Linux Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 30401 244196001 5 Extended /dev/sda5 1 2611 20972794+ 83 Linux /dev/sda6 2612 5222 20972826 83 Linux /dev/sda7 5223 7180 15727603+ 83 Linux /dev/sda8 7181 9138 15727603+ 83 Linux /dev/sda9 9139 11096 15727603+ 83 Linux /dev/sda10 11097 13054 15727603+ 83 Linux /dev/sda11 13055 16971 31463271 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda12 16972 22192 41937651 83 Linux /dev/sda13 22193 26108 31455238+ 83 Linux /dev/sda14 26109 30401 34483491 83 Linux Disk /dev/dm-0: 35.3 GB, 35307651072 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4292 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/dm-1: 64.7 GB, 64751665152 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7872 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/dm-2: 42.9 GB, 42941284352 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5220 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk /dev/dm-2 doesn't contain a valid partition table Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info:
When it hangs, cna you still switch ttys?
I've tried the function combiantions for Ctrl, Alt and Ctrl-Alt eg Ctrl-Alt F3. The system is frozen. Even Numlock doesn't light up when I press it. The circle thing around the pointer also stops spinning and just stays in the position it was. Mouse doesn't move. So what I did was to remove the SATA drive, unplugged the SATA cable from the motherboard. Put in the FC6 install DVD and when it got to the same point, it moved on to the point where it asked me to upgrade or install. I chose install and the screen went blank and froze (waited for less than 5 minutes at that screen). So my SATA suspicions have proved to be somewhat correct I would suspect. This is the SATA info from FC5: [root:~#] lsmod | grep sata sata_via 10693 3 libata 99161 1 sata_via [root:~#] lspci | grep SATA 00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80) [root:~#]lspci -v (selected portion) 00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO]) Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology GA-7VM400AM(F) Motherboard Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 169 I/O ports at 9400 [size=8] I/O ports at 9800 [size=4] I/O ports at 9c00 [size=8] I/O ports at a000 [size=4] I/O ports at a400 [size=16] I/O ports at a800 [size=256] Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2 [root:~#] lspci -n | grep 00:0f.0 00:0f.0 0101: 1106:3149 (rev 80) [root:~#] grep 1106 /lib/modules/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5/modules.pcimap | grep 3149 sata_via 0x00001106 0x00003149 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x0 [root:~#] modinfo sata_via filename: /lib/modules/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5/kernel/drivers/scsi/sata_via.ko author: Jeff Garzik description: SCSI low-level driver for VIA SATA controllers license: GPL version: 2.0 vermagic: 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5 mod_unload 686 REGPARM 4KSTACKS gcc-4.1 depends: libata alias: pci:v00001106d00000591sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v00001106d00003149sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v00001106d00003249sv*sd*bc*sc*i* srcversion: 826D41190D62A5FFC744E90
I loaded with linux reiserfs selinux=0 noprobe and chose the ahci driver. This time it went past the Searching for Fedora Core installations sections but hung after I chose to install a fresh install. I should have added that the motherboard I am using is the Gigabyte GA-8VM800M-775 with the SATA controller VIA VT8237R.
Sometimes the solution is staring you in the face but you do not see it. The problem seems to be solved (the install process moves past the two hang points. But I have not gone further in the install process as I am about to go to bed. Will install tomorrow though). Anyway, there are 2 partitions I wanted to resize for some time (sda5 and sda6). I happened to have loaded XP the other day and fired up Acronis Disk Suite. This gave me errors about reading some of the drives. Incidentally gparted had stalled when I had some weeks before first tried to repartition but I closed it before any error messages came up. Anyway, when I have previously loaded rescue of the FC5 disk the following error has also come up [code] Error mounting file system on hdd8: Operation not supported[/code] The same error occurs for sda12 and sda13. So I decided to do a fsck on the drives. Doing the fsck on the lv partitions meant when I next tried the FC6 install it gave every indication that it would complete without a problem. I will install tomorrow and inform whether that completes without a problem.
FC6 installed without issues. Though it is not a bug maybe it would be a good idea, if possible, to have a way of the installer to check partitions for errors.