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Installation freezes at 2%
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=21087
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Author:  nicom [ Sat May 22, 2010 2:22 am ]
Post subject:  Installation freezes at 2%

I have successfully been playing with R6.02 on a test machine and today went to install it on my working machine as described in my signature. The first time I tried it seemed to get to the end of the install process (100%) but stopped and did not reboot itself. A manual reboot did not work. Any subsequent attempts to install only get as far a 2% when it's partitioning sda3. Checking other consoles it looks like it is in a loop. The screen shows
Code:
LinHES

larch5 login: hostname: Host name lookup failure
xauth: creating new authority file /home/mythtv/.serverauth.9531

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
          If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.XO-lock
          and start again
It repeats this cycle only changing the serverauth number. I took the disk out and removed all partitions on it but the same thing keeps happening.

On another splashscreen verbose page it seems to get as far as loading the nvidia drivers 96** and then get the following message about 8 times
Code:
Xlib:  extension "Generic  Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
and eventually an "ID "C7" respawning too fast" message.

I have tried a number of the options on the installation setup,
Specific hardware - Dragon 2 (as my machine is close to a Dragon 2 except for the video cards)
Debug modes - no splashscreen (I think)
but get the same result.

Can anyone help me? Fortunately I am installing on a new hard drive so my existing R5.5 still works fine. I unplug the existing drive while trying the installation just to make sure I don't stuff it up. The new drive is a WD 1000EARS if that is important.

Author:  Golffies [ Sat May 22, 2010 4:44 am ]
Post subject: 

Hi,

I am afraid it won't help so much; I saw two threads which have vague similarities:


Author:  nicom [ Sat May 22, 2010 6:47 pm ]
Post subject: 

Yes I did look at those posts also but could not see how they could help me. I cannot get far enough to get logs.

As an update I should also say that I am trying to do this using the plasma TV as monitor connected by DVI-D cable. I tried booting to a Ubuntu live CD with the new drive disconnected and the original connected. The boot failed saying that another server was running for display 0. Reconnecting the TV using vga rather than the DVI-D and the Ubuntu boot completed successfully.

I suppose I could try installing LinHES using the vga connection but I was hoping to keep the connections as finally intended to allow its display setup to work. If I do install using vga I could copy over the existing Xorg.conf.

Does anyone have a recommendation?

Author:  tjc [ Sun May 23, 2010 11:10 am ]
Post subject: 

These low % failures while formatting usually indicate a problem with accessing the drive. They can also indicate an problem with the CD image or optical drive you're using for the install.

The first thing to look at is what drives are being seen at what device names. Something like "fdisk -l" should provide the details. To run it just boot from the CD and then switch to another virtual console (Ctrl-Alt-F1 for console 1, Crtl-Alt-F2 for console 2, ...). Once you know what devices and partitions are available make sure you've selected the one you intended to.

Author:  nicom [ Sun May 23, 2010 5:54 pm ]
Post subject: 

Thanks tjc, I must admit I have been a bit suspicious of the CD drive so I will try an old spare one. The actual CD works on other computers.

Do you know if the installation should not object to how the computer is connected to the TV (DVI-d vs. VGA)?

Author:  nicom [ Mon May 24, 2010 4:05 am ]
Post subject: 

Latest update.

I tried another CD drive - same result.
I tried another CD drive cable - same result
I tried connecting to the TV by the vga connector - same result
I tried using an LCD monitor instead of the TV - same result

I am trying to install to a new clean disk so the entire disk is available for the installation. "fdisk -l" showed me the 3 partitions (sda1, 2 and 3) generated by the installation.

Is it having a problem with my Gigabyte 7300GS video card?

Author:  nicom [ Sun May 30, 2010 5:23 pm ]
Post subject: 

I tried again on the weekend but was unsuccessful. I did however find the the following logs in /tmp in RAM.
mv_debug.log
mv_status.log
mythvantage_install.log
x.log
The first 3 show no errors or problems and the last entry in each is "Starting format of sda3"
The entire x.log looks like
Code:
xauth:  creating new authority file /root/.serverauth.4501
xauth:  creating new authority file /root/.Xauthority
xauth:  creating new authority file /root/.Xauthority


X.Org X Server 1.5.3
Release Date: 5 November 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.26-ARCH i686
Current Operating System: Linux larch5 2.6.28-LinHES #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Nov 1 06:47:02 UTC 2009 i686
Build Date: 12 January 2009  10:25:53PM
 
   Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
   to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
   (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
   (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sun May 30 01:17:12 2010
(++) Using config file: "/root/xorg.conf.install"
(EE) config/hal: NewInputDeviceRequest failed
(EE) config/hal: NewInputDeviceRequest failed
(EE) config/hal: NewInputDeviceRequest failed

Does this mean anything to anyone? I have tried to investigate this error message and have determined that others have had similar messages due to the keyboard (mine is cordless) or the remote (Streamzap) so perhaps I will try another keyboard and no remote. All the other posts I have looked at refer to during operation not installation.

Author:  tjc [ Sun May 30, 2010 8:04 pm ]
Post subject: 

Those don't look fatal, it's just the X server looking for keyboards and mice. To be doubly sure you can minimize the input devices and just plug in a PS2 or USB keyboard and mouse.

However, I really think you need to focus on the identity of the drives. If you can boot the CD and get to a console, make sure that /dev/sda is _really_ your hard drive. A sure way to have formatting fail is to have it trying to write to the wrong device, like say your CD/DVD drive, or an all in one card reader with no media installed, or...

This is *FAR* more likely with the new kernels which like to map all storage devices into /dev/sd* names so that they can be accessed uniformly using the SCSI emulation layer.

So look at what device it's reading the CD image from, if the CD is mounted on /dev/sda you have your smoking gun. Look at how the drives are being identified. If you have a Samsung DVD drive and a WD hard drive, and /dev/sda says it's a SanDisk device, /dev/sdb says it's a Samsung device, and /dev/sdc says it's a WD device you have your smoking gun.

Author:  nicom [ Sun May 30, 2010 9:15 pm ]
Post subject: 

I will have another look tonight, but I seem to remember when I tried "fdisk -l" all I saw was the 3 partitions on the hard drive and no sign of the DVD drive. Is that right or does that indicate a problem?

I have determined by booting with an Ubuntu disk, that Mythvantage had managed to partition the hard drive correctly, and that sda1 and 2 had been formatted to ext and swap respectively but sda 3 was unformatted. I was able to format sda3 to xfs with gparted in Ubuntu, but that doesn't help the installation process.

Author:  nicom [ Mon May 31, 2010 5:43 am ]
Post subject: 

I can confirm that "fdisk -l" only shows the 3 partitions on the hard drive.

I think I may have narrowed it down to the new hard drive. I plugged it into my test machine and got the same result. When I connect a old PATA drive I can install successfully. The test machine also has a SATA drive onto which I have successfully loaded R5.5. I also tried loading R5.5 and R5F1 onto the new drive and again the process stops whilst formatting sda3.

Are there any settings/jumpers I should be using? When on my test machine I have to use a jumper to slow the new drive down to SATA 1 speeds, otherwise it doesn't see the drive.

Is the drive faulty? Once formatted it seems to behave normally.(edit) Also I successfully loaded Ubuntu onto it.

Is there a manual approach to get me past the formatting stage of the installation? I can format with gParted instead.

Author:  tjc [ Tue Jun 01, 2010 7:54 pm ]
Post subject: 

nicom wrote:
I can confirm that "fdisk -l" only shows the 3 partitions on the hard drive.

Does it show them as /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, and dev/sda3? The identity of the disks is critical. Try this:
Code:
hdparm -i /dev//[hs]d[a-h]

I was a little fried the other day and couldn't remember it off the top of my head.

We have seem problems with older motherboards and SATA drives in previous releases, sometimes fiddling with the BIOS settings helped, other times people couldn't get past it.

Author:  nicom [ Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:30 pm ]
Post subject: 

Thanks for your advice on this.

fdisk gives the following
Code:
[root@larch5 ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units * cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e1212

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id   System
/dev/sda1   *           1         637     5116671   83   Linux
/dev/sda2             638         763     1012095   83   Linux
/dev/sda3             764      121601   970631235   83   Linux
[root@larch5 ~]#

hdparm -i /dev//[hs]d[a-h] gives the following:
Code:
[root@larch5 ~]# hdparm -i /dev//[hs]d[a-h]

/dev/sda:

Model=WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1                     , FwRev=80.00A80, SerialNo=     WD-WCAV55561409
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultiSect=16, MultSect=?0?
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=1953525168
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes:  pio0 pio3 pio4
DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7

* signifies the current active mode

[root@larch5 ~]#

The above outputs were transcribed from a photograph of the screen so there may be some typos. I was not able to mount a usb stick to save the outputs directly.

The existing 500GB drive is SATA and works fine with R5.5. The BIOS currently selects ACHI mode. Could I try RAID mode even though I am not using RAID? I assume IDE mode would not work for a SATA drive.

Author:  JerryF [ Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:20 pm ]
Post subject: 

Don't know if it might be related, but I had this trouble (freezing at 2% or 3% partitioning/Starting format) when installing LinHES from CD using an IDE optical drive to a SATA hard drive. Switching to a SATA optical drive, or using the USB thumb drive install image:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20354

both got around it for me. It seemed to be something with the mix of IDE optical drive and SATA HD.

Author:  tjc [ Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:41 pm ]
Post subject: 

Interestingly if nicom has an optical drive it's not showing up in the hpparm output. The drive identified as sda looks like a WD 1Gb unit, but it seems to be all by itself.

When I run the hdparm command it shows 3 drives (2 HD, one DVD) with the third one identified as:
Code:
/dev/hdc:

 Model=_NEC DVD_RW ND-3520A, FwRev=1.04, SerialNo=
 Config={ Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
 RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
 (maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
 IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2
 AdvancedPM=no

 * signifies the current active mode


Nicom - what type of drive are you installing from?

Author:  nicom [ Thu Jun 03, 2010 11:11 pm ]
Post subject: 

It's a LITE-ON DVDRW LH-18A1P which is an IDE drive. It sounds very similar to your situation Jerry.

Now I have to decide do I go the USB thumb route or get a SATA optical drive. They're pretty cheap now and my current one sounds like a jet engine when it's doing heavy data transfer.

Thanks for the link.

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