From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2 i686) Description of problem: Complicated and vague I am afraid. Can't install rh 7.1 on system with various errors- may result from problem reading partition tables? 1) 7.1 failed to install over 6.2- ("upgrade") the hard disk was corrupted and could not be recovered without the use of a second machine. 2) A full install fails when trying to format the disk (installer either hangs or crashes out- sometimes exiting "safe to reboot" sometimes screen fulls of errors. 3) same machine builds fine with rh7.0 4) manual upgrading to kernel 2.4.2 fails after a number of packages are upgraded (sufficent to install kernel-2.4.2-i686.rpm) machine does reboot to 2.4 but with no keyboard and after powercycling it kernel panics while trying to mount the disks 4) 7.1 fails to "upgrade" on a new working install over 7.0- locks up after trying to install a new swap file- and appears (at this point) to report less space on the hard disk than appeared under 7.0 (I am not sure at this point if it was supposed to report disk size or free space, either way it looked a bit small). I have spent all day trying to get this upgrade to work so I am loathe to spend another day trying to extract specific error messages from the mess flying up the screen. It looks like the disk partitioning software and or mount software will not cope on this machine under 7.1 I think the kernel 2.4 problems arose after upgrading some other packages but I can't be sure. The machine is A-ok under rh7.0 but I want kernel 2.4 for some new drivers. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. On my machine, (6x86MX Pr233 / TX4 Motherboard / Seagate Medalist 4321 4Gb disk / AWARD bios), insert rh 7.1 and power on (that is it) Actual Results: Installation fails corrupting the hard disk Expected Results: Should have had a nice linux 2.4 box Additional info: It takes an annoyingly long time to cycle through this install process and the disk corruption problems would be totally fatal if I didn't have another machine to recover the partitions with. Experimenting with the kernel packages suggests an incompatibility or error in on of the disk utilities in rh 7.1
Do you have the bandwidth to download 7.2, which was released today?
Will try to get 7.2 and let you know the outcome- matt
ok.
Tried rh7.2 "upgrade" and failed The upgrade process got as far as trying to mount the hard disk and then failed- it was more graceful than rh7.1 in that it trapped the error, however it still trashed the hard disk. On reboot to the previous system (rh7.0 kernel 2.2.16) the hard disk was trashed- slightly different to the previous problem. (previously mount experienced a divide by zero error) This time ext2_fs gave this problem followed by a kernel panic ext2_fs:fragsize 4096 != blocksize 1024 Invalid session # of type of track Unable to mount root fs on 03:05 The disk has had to be repaired using e2fsck on another machine before any progress could be made- it is interesting to note that there where no errors on the /boot partition but the / partition was riddled with errors and required the use of a backup super block to repair. ---------------------- Next move- I am building a new system by placing the hard disk is another machine (with all the hardware moved over). This is building the system nicely and once finished I will place all this back in the original computer (motherboard) and try to boot it- I'll let you know what happens (if it is the partion functions a fault it may be ok, if mount is dodgy then we might not be). Anyway it looks like the install is chocking on the motherboard / disk controller / BIOS- (the bios is proabably ok we are using the same on in the new build machine, this also means that the hard disk is probably ok). The motherboard is a Micro Star MS 5156 v2 with a 1995 Award pnp/pci BIOS if this helps..... matt
OK- built rh7.2 system on harddisk using alternative motherboard System builds fine and runs fine (using ext3 fs) Rebuild the old computer using the old motherboard (Micro Star MS 5156 v2) and boot---- fine runs lovely Reboot- shutsdown fine umounts the fs "cleanly"- bombs on reboot todays error is Loading ext3 module EXT3-fs error device ide0(3,5) ext3_check_descriptors Block bitmap for group 31 not in group (block 983055) ! ext3-fs group descriptors corrupted ! mount: error 22 mounting ext3 pivotroot: pivot_root (/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 kernel panic So in summary the harddisk is OK and accepts the system with no problems, the new kernel boots fine but trashes the filesystem somewhere along the way so that rebooting is impossible. This is beginning to look more like a kernel problem with 2.4 and the motherboard / harddisk controller than a simple install program to me. Since I have wasted a lot of time with this so far and I need a working system based on this mother board now I will have to go back to k2.2 and rh7.0 which work fine. However, I would very much like the new parallel port support that came with kernel 2.4 inparticular I would like the ppdev module to be supported to allow a user space driver that doesn't require the use of inb/outb/iopl to work- Any suggestions? Thanks matt
I can't help you too much with the kernel stuff. I would suggest opening a new bug against the kernel to figure out why it doesn't seem to work with your motherboard, if you have the time to work with the kernel team to figure out what's wrong. As for this bug report, do you want me to change the component of this bug to the kernel and hand it off to the kernel team or should I close it since you've going back to the 2.2 kernel?
bfox, Could you hand it to the kernel team please? I would like to get the system up and running on 2.4 someday- thanks matt
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem persists. The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/