hang on isolinux....

tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

I'm trying to install on an old server that i have. It is based on a SuperMicro X6DH8-XG2 motherboard, 8 GB memory 12 500 GB hard drives, internal 80 GB and 128 Mb flash drive. I load the install disk, and it comes up to "isolinux.... (peter anvin)..." and hangs. I don't get a boot prompt or anything like that. Just hangs. I've tried a boot disk for another distro (the one i'm moving away from), and it works fine. I've tried to boot another machine with this install disk, and it works fine. So, it seems to be just Gentoo, on this particular motherboard. The only thing that might be strange is that there is an adaptec scsi controller chip built onto the motherboard. I'd like to use gentoo on this box, but so far I can't even get the install cd to boot...

Thanks in advance,

Tom

Jaglover · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:59 am Post subject:

Welcome to the forums!

When you read a little deeper into Gentoo Handbook you will realize nothing from install CD will be part of your Gentoo installation. Meaning you can use any Linux CD to boot your box and install Gentoo. Just make sure you boot a 64-bit Linux CD if you want 64-bit install.
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tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

thanks for that. that was just the encouragement i needed. moving on and doing my install now

tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

I was finally able to get back to the installation, and everything seemed to be progressing correctly. When I reboot the system after the base install, I get the grub2 boot screen just fine. I select to load linux, and grub tells me it is loading. But nothing happens. It just sits there. I tried to add debugging commands to the boot command "debug ignore_loglevel" and nothing is printed out. It is as if it's the same issue as the gentoo boot disk. (I used a mageia boot disk when doing the installation, but I want to move away because of systemd). How can tell what is/isn't happening?

Jaglover · Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2014 11:14 pm Post subject:

You sure it is GRUB that tells you loading? Or it is kernel giving you this message?
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tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

it appears to be. It is what the line from the grub.cfg file says....

steveL · Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2014 11:57 pm Post subject:

Are you sure you have the drivers for your mobo chipset and the rootfs (eg ext4 works on ext2 and ext3 as well) built-in to your kernel (Y), and not as modules(M)?

tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

to the best of my knowledge i do. i will get a dump of lspci and my kernel .config file to verify.

Jaglover · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 12:09 am Post subject:

It may be your GRUB is enumerating your block devices in an unexpected way and tries to load kernel from a device which does not have it. However, it should give an error at least.
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tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

I originally thought that, because sometimes when i boot, the boot disk is enumerated as /dev/sdi, and sometimes as /dev/sdm. my boot partition is on the same drive as the / partition. partition 1 is set to be /boot and partition 2 is set to be /. In my /etc/fstab, i have defined the drives to mount by uuid, because of this issue.

tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

i know... posting under my own post.....

anyway, it obviously finds the boot device, because i get the grub menu. then i go to add arguments to the command line to see if it progresses (as i said, i set debug and ignore_loglevel), and nothing prints on the console

Jaglover · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 12:44 am Post subject:

GRUB has its own commandline and commands to diagnose and display hardware configuration as it sees it. I'd try those tools from GRUB menu instead of booting.
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tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

i will have to learn more about grub command line then... Still looking forward to getting this going. thank you

steveL · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 3:59 am Post subject:

Jaglover · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 5:03 am Post subject:

Usually when bootloader loads the kernel and kernel is not properly configured to handle partitions/filesystems/controllers there will be some error message from kernel. This is not happening.
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wswartzendruber · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 6:02 am Post subject:

See, I'm wondering about EFI framebuffers and if the kernel even knows how to output anything.

steveL · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 9:10 am Post subject:

Yeah; let's eliminate the basics upfront, and show how to check the modules you need while we're about it.

tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

first off, i reset my grub resolution so that i could see a little more. I tried to boot manually, and after trying a few different combinations, I at least got things to start booting. the boot crashes quite early, and the stack trace takes more than my screen, but close to the bottom of the trace it says that it is trying to mount root. but there is far too much to try to copy, and i have no way to capture the actual output. the important part looks to me like this...

smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x3a/0x4b
apic_timer_interrupt_0x6a/0x70
<EOI> {VERY LONG ADDRESS} ? panic+0x1a8/0x1e1
panic_0x1a4/0x1e1
mount_block_root+0x190/0x224
mount_root_0xf0/0xf9
prepare_namespace+0x13c/0x174
kernel_init_freeable+0x1c4/0x1d1

ok.... i made a very large pastebin. it contains the output from lspci, followed by /usr/src/linux/.config. after this is the output from dmesg when i boot from a rescue disk. i also have the output of /boot/grub/grub.conf, /etc/mdadm.conf, a listing of /dev/disk/by-uuid, and /etc/fstab. i hope i didn't miss anything important.

url to the pastebin is:

http://pastebin.com/cHYGqALx

tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

any suggestions yet? i've tried setting rootfs=ext4 as mentioned in another thread, i've tried many things that the grub manual has suggested, but so far to no avail. i'm very stuck at this point....

Jaglover · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 9:30 pm Post subject:

Well, it sounds like you may have no driver for your controller.
Boot with something that boots and run lspci -nnk, this will give you PCI ID for your controller along with driver name. You can use this PCI ID to look up at http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/ to confirm the driver is correct.
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tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

the output from lspci -nnk for the boot device (when booting from the rescue disk) is:

00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 8201EB/ER (ICH5/ICHR) IDE Controller [8086:24db] (rev02)
Subsystem: Super Micro Computer Inc Device [15d9:6180]
Kernel driver in use: ata_piix
Kernel modules: ata_piix, pata_acpi, ata_generic, piix, ide_pci_generic

Here is every reference to PIIX in my .config

CONFIG_ATA_PIIX=y
CONFIG_SATA_MV=y

CONFIG_PATA_OLDPIIX=y

# CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX is not set

# CONFIG_IC2_PIIX4 is not set

CONFIG_ATA=y
# CONFIG_ATA_NONSTANDARD is not set
CONFIG_ATA_VERBOSE_ERROR=y
CONFIG_ATA_ACPI=y
CONFIG_SATA_PMP=Y

CONFIG_STATA_AHCI=y
CONFIG_SATA_AHCI_PLATFORM=y
#CONFIG_SATA_INIC162X is not set
# CONFIG_STAT_ACARD_AHCI is not set
# CONFIG_SATA_SIL24 is not set
CONFIG ATA_SFF=y

CONFIG_ATA_BMDMA=y

it seems to me the piix driver should have been built into the kernel

tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

Is there any way that after grub, and during the kernel boot that i can leave my console at 1024x768? i only get a 24 line console, and don't get to see all of the kernel panic trace back.

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 11:16 pm Post subject:

OK, do you have /boot as a separate partition? I is quite common even experienced Gentoo users forget to mount the boot when installing a new kernel and keep booting the old one. Other things to check: is the partition table type you are using enabled in kernel, root filesystem support must be enabled as well.
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tomg_66 · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2014 Posts: 18

yes, boot is a seperate partition. it is partition 1 of my onboard ide drive. partition2 is my / partition. the first sata drive is not assigned to my raid 5 array, and the rest of the drives (11) are in a raid 5 array. The first drive goes on /home. the raid 5 array mounts on /var/local. currently in my fstab, i have those two mounts commented out. the / and /boot partitions of the ide drive were partitioned with fdisk. all file systems are ext4.

from my .config file from /usr/src/linux:

#
# File systems
#
CONFIG_DCACHE_WORD_ACCESS=y
CONFIG_EXT2_FS=y
CONFIG_EXT2_FS_XATTR=y
CONFIG_EXT2_FS_POSIX_ACL=y
CONFIG_EXT2_FS_SECURITY=y
# CONFIG_EXT2_FS_XIP is not set
CONFIG_EXT3_FS=y
CONFIG_EXT3_DEFAULTS_TO_ORDERED=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_XATTR=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_POSIX_ACL=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_SECURITY=y
CONFIG_EXT4_FS=y
CONFIG_EXT4_FS_POSIX_ACL=y
CONFIG_EXT4_FS_SECURITY=y
# CONFIG_EXT4_DEBUG is not set

sometimes when i boot from the rescue disk my boot drive is enumerated as /dev/sdi and sometimes as /dev/sdm. This is my grub.cfg file:

$ cat grub.cfg
#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by grub2-mkconfig using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
#

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ###
if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then
load_env
fi
if [ "${next_entry}" ] ; then
set default="${next_entry}"
set next_entry=
save_env next_entry
set boot_once=true
else
set default="0"
fi

if [ x"${feature_menuentry_id}" = xy ]; then
menuentry_id_option="--id"
else
menuentry_id_option=""
fi

export menuentry_id_option

if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then
set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}"
save_env saved_entry
set prev_saved_entry=
save_env prev_saved_entry
set boot_once=true
fi

function savedefault {
if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then
saved_entry="${chosen}"
save_env saved_entry
fi
}

function load_video {
if [ x$feature_all_video_module = xy ]; then
insmod all_video
else
insmod efi_gop
insmod efi_uga
insmod ieee1275_fb
insmod vbe
insmod vga
insmod video_bochs
insmod video_cirrus
fi
}

if [ x$feature_default_font_path = xy ] ; then
font=unicode
else
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd8,msdos2'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd8,msdos2 --hint-efi=hd8,msdos2 --hint-baremetal=ahci8,msdos2 a9d75932-d30f-4593-9e6f-18e2ca915f63
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root a9d75932-d30f-4593-9e6f-18e2ca915f63
fi
font="/usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2"
fi

if loadfont $font ; then
set gfxmode=1024x768
load_video
insmod gfxterm
fi
terminal_output gfxterm
if [ x$feature_timeout_style = xy ] ; then
set timeout_style=menu
set timeout=7
# Fallback normal timeout code in case the timeout_style feature is
# unavailable.
else
set timeout=7
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Gentoo GNU/Linux' --class gentoo --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-a9d75932-d30f-4593-9e6f-18e2ca915f63' {
load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd8,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd8,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd8,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci8,msdos1 ae2aafd6-cfca-4540-984c-ddbb57bf2ac7
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ae2aafd6-cfca-4540-984c-ddbb57bf2ac7
fi
echo 'Loading Linux 3.16.5-gentoo ...'
linux /vmlinuz-3.16.5-gentoo root=/dev/sdi2 ro
}
submenu 'Advanced options for Gentoo GNU/Linux' $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-advanced-a9d75932-d30f-4593-9e6f-18e2ca915f63' {
menuentry 'Gentoo GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.16.5-gentoo' --class gentoo --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-3.16.5-gentoo-advanced-a9d75932-d30f-4593-9e6f-18e2ca915f63' {
load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd8,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd8,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd8,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci8,msdos1 ae2aafd6-cfca-4540-984c-ddbb57bf2ac7
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ae2aafd6-cfca-4540-984c-ddbb57bf2ac7
fi
echo 'Loading Linux 3.16.5-gentoo ...'
linux /vmlinuz-3.16.5-gentoo root=/dev/sdi2 ro
}
menuentry 'Gentoo GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.16.5-gentoo (recovery mode)' --class gentoo --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-3.16.5-gentoo-recovery-a9d75932-d30f-4593-9e6f-18e2ca915f63' {
load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root='hd8,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd8,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd8,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci8,msdos1 ae2aafd6-cfca-4540-984c-ddbb57bf2ac7
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ae2aafd6-cfca-4540-984c-ddbb57bf2ac7
fi
echo 'Loading Linux 3.16.5-gentoo ...'
linux /vmlinuz-3.16.5-gentoo root=/dev/sdi2 ro single
}
}

### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###
### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###
if [ -f ${config_directory}/custom.cfg ]; then
source ${config_directory}/custom.cfg
elif [ -z "${config_directory}" -a -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then
source $prefix/custom.cfg;
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###
$

The uuid that ends in 5f63 is the / partition of my boot drive. the uuid that ends in 2ac7 is my /boot partition

C5ace · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:13 am Post subject:

Had a very similar problem. Stuffed around for a week with grub2, configuring kernels, etc. etc.

I solved this by unplugging all hard disks except the one that showed up first when starting up the PC. This then became /dev/sda

Then wiped sda with dd to get rid of all garbage and formatting information. The installed Gentoo following the handbook, "genkernel all" and "grub legacy".

/dev/sda1 /boot (500MB)
/dev/sda2 /swap
/dev/sda3 / (20GB)
/dev/sda4 /home

Gentoo booted on the first try. I then added step by step 5 disks additional disk formatted with ext4 and used dd to fill them with data "AAA..." for sdb1, "BBB...," for sdc1. When complete, rebooted, verified that the disks showed up in the right sequence and converted them to a RAID 5 array for data.

This may be of interest:
I have a low end Toshiba Laptop with a Intel 64 bit fake 2 core CPU. The CPU is actually a single core with some switching circuit to fool Windoze to show 2 cores running at halve speed. OpenSuse works fine. If you install VirtualBox, Gentoo 64_86 installation disk will not boot. System Rescue CD will boot and allow full installation of Gentoo in the change root environment. The actual installation will not boot.

Your problems may also be caused by having a similar processor.