From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (Win98; U) Description of problem: I have an Intell Penium II computer on which I have been running RedHat 6.1 and Windows 2000 SE. I have two hard drives. I decided to upgrade to RH7.1 but the installer crashed. I thought perhaps the installer needed more disk space so I backed up /home, /etc, and /usr/local to a FAT32 partition and then repartitioned both drives. I then installed RH7.1 from scratch, but the installer froze just as the progress window for transferring install image to h.d. appeared. I have 64Megs of RAM and 517Megs of Swap. I also tried to get the RH6.1 installer to install the RH7.1 but it does not recognize the RH7.1 cdroms. I have now reinstalled the RH6.1 and would like to install RH7.1 to a new partition: /dev/hda1 FAT32 Windows2000 /dev/hda2 ext2 /home /dev/hdb1 FAT32 /dev/hdb2 ext2 / RH6.1 /dev/hdb5 ext2 /RH7.1/boot /dev/hdb6 Swap 517Megs /dev/hdb7 ext2 /RH7.1 But the RH7.1 installer always crashes just after a sliver of the progress window for transferring install image to h.d. appears. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Boot from RedHat7.1 CDROM 2.Choose Workstation or Custom or Upgrade 3.After selecting packages and formatting h.d. the installer will freeze just after the progress window for transferring install image to h.d. appears. Actual Results: The installer freezes (crashes). Expected Results: The installer should have begun installing all the packages selected for the class of installation selected. Additional info:
When the installer freezes, can you press <Ctrl><Alt><F4> and see if there are any kernel error messages?
I pressed Ctrl-Alt-F4 as you suggested and although I could not write fast enough to capture everything, I think I got what's important: <7> ISO 9660 extensions RRIP_1991A <7> Unable to identify CD ROM format <6> Adding Swap <4> 8 reg 439.600 Mb/sec <4> 32 reg 244.800 Mb/sec <4> pII_max 601.200 Mb/sec <4> p5_max 629.200 Mb/sec <4> hdc timeout waiting for DMA <4> ide_dma_proc: chipset supported ide_dma_timeout function only: 14 <4> irq timeout: status=0xff { Busy} <4> DMA disabled <4> ATAPI reset timed-out, status=0xff <4> reset timed-out, status=0xff <4> status timeout: status=0xff { Busy} <4> end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 1035320 The last four lines just keep repeating as the CD ROM is silent. I am able to read this CD in Windows and in RedHat 6.1 I could copy both RH7 install disks to the FAT32 partition: /dev/hdb1 and try installing from there. On the first disk there are some RPMS that are in the RedHat directory rather than in the subdirectory RPMS. Should I maintain the same organization and combine the RPMS from the RPMS directories on both disks?
try booting the installer with "linux ida=nodma". If this works, send the output of: for I in /proc/ide/hd*; do echo $I; cat $I/model; done
Since I last commented, I decided to work around the cdrom problem by booting into RedHat6.1 and making an iso9660 image of the RH7.1 install CDs. I then booted from an installatiion diskette for RH7.1 and was then able to finally install RH7.1 However, when I tried to install RPMS from the Powertools CD the GNORPM hung when trying to read the CD so the bug appears to be with the kernel and not anaconda. I then booted RH7.1 with your boot paramter ide=nodma and tried to install RPMS from the Powertools CD, but the GNORPM hung with the same ATAPI reset timed out sys error message. Here is /proc/ide/hd*/model as you requested: /proc/ide/hda ST34342A /proc/ide/hdb IBM-DTLA-307015 /proc/ide/hdc BCD 32X CD-ROM
so, if I'm reading you right, ide=nodma didn't get rid of the timeouts, correct?
My apologies -- I must have goofed! ide=nodma fixes the problem. I've re-checked now several times the boot parameter ide=nodma when booting RH7.1 and that seems to solve the problem of reading CDROMs. I've also re-checked booting without this parameter and find that the system then hangs when reading the CDROM. Fortunately I can shut the system down from another Virtual Terminal, but the system is unable to successfully unmount /home and must recheck and fix the filesystem on reboot. I guess the problem is now solved? I was afraid I was going to have to attempt to compile a newer version of the kernel.
ide=nodma is a reasonable workaround for the bad cdrom drive; I'll add it to the list of known-bad cdromdrives so it'll be automatic in the future. Thanks for the info.