Description of problem: Anaconda failed after formatting the / partition, produced a dump file and instructed me to upload it to bugzilla
Created attachment 156106 [details] Dump File
Running a 3ware Escalade ATA RAID controller 7506. Worked fine under FC6
Did you verify your media according to the instructions at http://rhlinux.redhat.com/anaconda/mediacheck.html?
I have a similar problem with an old K7 system. Worked fine under FC6, fails in various different ways during or immediately after anaconda attempts to format the drive. Failures include format hanging at about 90% done, an "uncaught exception" and a pop-up telling me that I've "probably run out of disk space." In the last of these, the install attempted to continue, but failed later. My media was verified before installation.
To answer Jeremy Katz, yes I verified my media before my first installation attempt. I also checked the SHA1SUM before burning the DVD. Additional info: I decided to re-install FC6 which (worked again flawlessly) and then perform an Upgrade to F7 which fails frequently during the installation of packages. Sometimes it will install a few hundred packages; once only TWO before failing. I wonder if there is a problem with the 3w-xxxx driver in F7.
Hello Craig, I'm reviewing this bug as part of the kernel bug triage project, an attempt to isolate current bugs in the fedora kernel. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KernelBugTriage I am CC'ing myself to this bug and will try and assist you in resolving it if I can. There hasn't been much activity on this bug for a while. In the run-up to Fedora 8 it would be good if you could test this with Fedora 8 test 2, available from: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download This will help developers iron out installer bugs such as yours which are of particular importance as they cannot be resolved in an update. If the problem no longer exists then please close this bug or I'll do so in a few days if there is no additional information lodged. Cheers Chris
Hi Chris, I'm glad to see you looking at this bug. I'm not a programmer myself and thus cannot do much to address it, however I'd be happy to test possible fixes. As I mentioned in my earlier comments, I no longer suspect this is a bug with anaconda, but rather the 3ware driver or its support in the kernel. I'm not absolutely certain however. Perhaps the bug summary line should be changed? In order to keep my machine running, I rolled back to FC6 and have been running that since. Thanks Craig
(In reply to comment #7) > Hi Chris, > > I'm glad to see you looking at this bug. I'm not a programmer myself and thus > cannot do much to address it, however I'd be happy to test possible fixes. ..and in the same way a triage nurse is not a doctor neither am I much good at coding. :) However there is a lot of kernel bugs filed and with Fedora 8 coming up its important to whittle things down and remove ones that have been resolved. > As I mentioned in my earlier comments, I no longer suspect this is a bug with > anaconda, but rather the 3ware driver or its support in the kernel. I'm not > absolutely certain however. Perhaps the bug summary line should be changed? > > In order to keep my machine running, I rolled back to FC6 and have been running > that since. Is there a chance you can test Fedora 8 T2? It might even be helpful to see if the live cd boots for you. I've added a blocker bug for the next kernel release which will be a heads up for the kernel developers who can then weigh in and ask you for more info if possible. Cheers Chris
I've just tried 7.91 on the hardware that failed previously for me. Same symptoms, I'm afraid. Anaconda failed copying the installation image to the disk, then throws an exception. I'll attach that.
Created attachment 196661 [details] Anaconda dump from 7.91 install attempt
Thanks for that Jeff. Looks like this is the error that causes things to fail: 07:43:24 CRITICAL: error transferring stage2.img: [Errno 5] Input/output error although: 07:43:20 ERROR : unable to set timezone and <6>sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Add. Sense: Logical unit communication CRC error (Ultra-DMA/32) <4>end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 5541080 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385270 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385271 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385272 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385273 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385274 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385275 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385276 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385277 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385278 <3>Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 1385279 indicate that perhaps your CMOS battery has failed (although the power supply should keep system time until poweroff) and the second error seems like either bad data cable, perhaps truncating the install partition and causing the installation to fall with too little space. These are just speculations however. I see the hard drive is 40GB - are you using all of this for the install, formatting and re-installing?
Thanks for that. The machine is about seven years old so a dead CMOS battery would be unsurprising. However, it keeps time, even when off for a day or more, so if its battery is dying, it's not quite dead yet. The machine's in use (with FC6) so doing trial F7/8 installs on it is a nuisance. Reinstalling FC6 after Anaconda's mucked around with the disk works flawlessly. Disk is fully allocated. Usual /boot, 768MB swap, and the rest is /. It looks like some driver problem with the old hardware. I can swap cables and battery, but I'm reluctant to have to do a full FC6 install and configure again on that basis. If there's some way to test the F7/8 drivers without trashing the disk I'll give that a go.
Other than a live cd its difficult to test and replicate. If its keeping time after being turned off (and unplugged) then it won't be the CMOS battery - those things can last for ages to be fair. You can get the latest live cd from: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download It'd be disappointing if something has changed to *stop* it running on your hardware. Are you running the same 3ware controller Craig mentioned? it would be good to get an lspci -vvxx output attachment if you can. Cheers Chris
(In reply to comment #10) > Created an attachment (id=196661) [edit] > Anaconda dump from 7.91 install attempt > It is having problems reading the DVD. Was the media verified on the machine that was attempting the install? And is there really a 40-wire cable on the hard drive and an 80-wire cable on the DVD?
Created attachment 198011 [details] lspci -vvxx on affected K7 system Here's the output from lspci -vvxx, running FC6. I'll try booting it from a F7.91 Live CD later.
Tried booting from F7.91 Live CD. Failed the first time---I got a login screen, but although it claimed to be about to log in as fedora "in 0 seconds" it just sat there. Second attempt worked. Could mount /boot from the FC6 installation, but not /. Just complained that it was "busy."
Oops. Forgot that / was a logical volume. It mounts okay, so the Live CD can see the disk well enough.
I would recommend ensuring that you do have the 80-wire cable chuck mentioned as well as doing a media check (boot with linux mediacheck) to make sure the disk is good. If either yourself or Craig can test with an install once this is done it would be great, as at the moment this is a release blocker. Cheers Chris
They're different machines, so whether mine has a particular cable is not relevant to Craig's. In any case, I've pulled it out of the stack and checked. Both the hard disk and the DVD are on separate 40 wire IDE cables. As it's happily run FC6, FC5, FC4, and various RH predecessors, and can't install F7/8 I think its cabling is not the problem.
Okay, I'm re-assigning to the relevant maintainer and they will hopefully be able to shed some more light on the problem. Cheers Chris
<6>sr 4:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x08000002 <6>sr0: Current: sense key: Hardware Error <6> Additional sense: Timeout on logical u Thats a media error or drive failure. While <6>sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE,SUGGEST_OK <6>sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] <6>sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Add. Sense: Logical unit communication CRC error (Ultra-DMA/32) looks like a pata_via problem or drive hiccup
(In reply to comment #19) > They're different machines, so whether mine has a particular cable is not > relevant to Craig's. In any case, I've pulled it out of the stack and checked. > Both the hard disk and the DVD are on separate 40 wire IDE cables. As it's > happily run FC6, FC5, FC4, and various RH predecessors, and can't install F7/8 I > think its cabling is not the problem. It looks like the cable is misdetected. It detects 80-wire on the second channel but you said it is really 40-wire. There was a bug in there that was fixed very recently (Sep 10), so this may be okay now.
The installation media tests okay. (Same symptoms with F7 media when I tried that .) About all I can add about the hardware is that the DVD drive is fairly recent compared with the rest of it and I suppose it may not be understood properly by the BIOS. If there's a potential fix from the 10th, how do I test it?
(In reply to comment #23) > The installation media tests okay. (Same symptoms with F7 media when I tried > that .) > > About all I can add about the hardware is that the DVD drive is fairly recent > compared with the rest of it and I suppose it may not be understood properly by > the BIOS. > > If there's a potential fix from the 10th, how do I test it? Try the rawhide boot/rescue discs from http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/i386/os (Some days there are no boot iso images, just try again the next day.)
Thanks Chuck. I'll try that then. There are no images there at the moment though.
Please forgive my ignorance, but there's a 9.7MB images/boot.iso there now. Is that what you mean?
Thats the one. Burn it like any other .iso file and boot from it. You can then install from a list of sources such as http, local nfs share etc. Cheers Chris
I've tried the LiveCD on my server with the 3ware RAID controller which is currently running FC6 / LVM / ext3 without a problem. While it does recognize the controller and the logical drives, and creates sdb1 and sdb2 (/boot and /), it does not recognize any filesystem on sdb2.
*** Bug 249209 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 217071 [details] Anaconda Crash Dump Attempted to UPGRADE my working FC6 server with 7.91 and it failed attempting to copy the image file to the disk. Attached is the file.
Created attachment 218381 [details] Anaconda dump from attempt to upgrade to 7.92 There was some possibility that the driver problem was fixed in 7.92. The attached dump is the result of trying to upgrade a working FC6 install on the target system with (tested media) of 7.92.
Can you try booting the media with 'libata.dma=1' on the boot command line? And if that doesn't work, try 'libata.dma=0'? These can be used to help work around problems with some flaky optical drives.
Note there isn't any point putting this in the blocker list, its a collection of assorted random unrelated bug reports
Jeff - your trace seems to be the drive saying the media is faulty, and Craig's is the drive reporting a hardware error and timeout, which again is probably a media problem. Still be interesting to know what libata.dma=1 does
Alan, I'll try the libata.dma=0/1 experiment and let you know. It's clear that there's something at best "unexpected" about this hardware, but it's also clear that between FC6 and F7 something was changed that's exposing the problem. (If I had to guess, I'd look to the 1999 BIOS it's running.) I would note that the machine in question has so far failed four or five DVDs, from F7 release on, and that that F7 disk has been used to install on other hardware without trouble. Of course, the fault could be in the DVD drive itself, but each time anaconda has trashed the hard disk I've successfully reinstalled FC6 from DVD.
I add my voice to Jeff's. My RAID controller and drives are working just fine with FC6, but something changed in 7+ that keeps my storage subsystem from being stable.
FWIW, I have a box that uses pata_via for a hard drive and a CD drive (K8M800 chipset), and it works OK in F8; so it's not something common to all pata_via installs.
I'm going to have to defer to Alan here - this is kind of a hodgepodge of bug reports and available evidence suggests that most pata_via systems work fine. Removing from blocker.
I've tried F7.92 with libata.dma=1 (and =0) and all that happens is that I get a driver selection dialogue. None of the PATA drivers offered work, dropping me back into the selection dialogue after loading. Any other suggestions welcome.
Jeff's trace is clearly showing that the drivers found the hardware and the CD drive reported an error transferring the bits for stage2.img. Unless the libata.dma= traces looks different (care to attach it) I'm putting it down as a media/hardware fault for now.
Alan, it's definitely not a media fault. Every post-FC6 installer disk I try gives the same family of problems and some of these are known-good media that have been used for installs on other machines. Could be a DVD drive fault, but it works flawlessly for the FC6 installer, so I doubt it. This is a regression that occured with F7. Whether it matters enough to F8 is not my call, but as FC6 is about to EOL, being able to upgrade has a certain necessity to it. (It would not surprise me if the combination of a relatively recent DVD drive and a 1999 MB and BIOS on this machine is exercising some less common pathways. I've actually got a replacement CPU/MB ready to go in this, but I've left it as is in case Fedora wants to track down the regression.) I'll happily attach any traces you tell me how to get. I didn't see any option to save anything from the installer dialogues yesterday. With either boot option of libata.dma=0/1, anaconda asks where to get the installer files from and then announces that it can't find such a device and puts up a chooser for device drivers.
As this is the bug I reported originally, I rearranged my schedule so I could spend some time on it. I migrated all my data off the server with the 3ware controller (a very popular controller for Linux use) and tried again. Keep in mind that it was working perfectly with FC6 and prior. Multiple installs with FC6 media and prior have worked without a hitch every time. First try: I attempted an Upgrade install over FC6. This surprised me because it ran to completion without dying. After rebooting however, I had nothing but kernel exceptions. Second try: I attempted a Full install, removing ALL partitions on the (logical) drive. It died during formatting of the root partition. I didn't get a crash report, just a message saying: An error occurred trying to format VolGroup00/LogVol00. This problem is serious, and the install cannot continue. Press <Enter> to exit the installer. Third and Fourth try: I attempted a Full install specifying the libata.dma=0/1 during boot and got the same issues Jeff Schultz had. Anaconda stayed in text mode and asked me where to get the installer files from, I specify local CD/DVD and it then announces that it can't find such a device and puts up a chooser for device drivers. No luck. After the third and fourth tries, the system was left in a state such that a warm reboot would not initialize the 3ware card and BIOS init halted there. I had to power-off to get it to initialize normally. Thinking that perhaps the controller was already in a weird state for try #2, I power-cycled again and re-tried a Full install, removing all Linux partitions this time. Same exact error as #2 above. Looks like I'm stuck at FC6.
Try the workarounds: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KernelCommonProblems Mainly nomsi/nommconf, and clocksource/nohz/highres
pci=nomsi,nommconf produces the same sort of error.
Created attachment 290286 [details] Anaconda Crash Dump
Above new dump file came from an install attempt with the release version of Fedora 8
Can you get a dump when using libata.dma=1? Somehow that is breaking DVD drive detection but we need to see the kernel messages.
(In reply to comment #47) > Can you get a dump when using libata.dma=1? Somehow that is breaking DVD drive > detection but we need to see the kernel messages. When I try this, I get the following error dialog while formatting: "An error occurred trying to format VolGroup00/LogVol00. This problem is serious, and the install cannot continue. Press <Enter> to exit the installer." When I press <Enter> it reboots the system. If you could give me the proper procedure for getting a dump file with this scenario, I'd be glad to. I have discovered Novell SLES 10 SP1 works perfectly.
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