Bad hard drive?

triwebb1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Oct 2003 Posts: 87

Hi. I have just re-installed gentoo on one of my old boxes, and it won't boot. Before I get into all of it, you should know that I used this same hardware before, and it worked. The only difference now is that I am using reiserfs instead of ext2 and I am using the 2.6.1 kernel instead of 2.4.22. So, when it boots it starts going through all the stuff and all the pretty green lights start going, but just after it says "Setting hostname....." it says "Calculating module dependencies...". It seems to be in the middle of that that it gives me an error report of some kind. It starts with

coldfire · n00b Joined: 27 Jan 2004 Posts: 53 Location: Edmonton, AB

First....let me just say that I have been using Gentoo Linux Since before 1.4_rc1. I have used many other distros and ever since I started Gentooing, I haven't gone back. I guess I've decided that it's time to stop lurking and start posting!

Anyway, I have seen a similar problem with one of my own systems....it wasn't a hardware issue, but I can't be sure if yours is. I'm guessing that you can't give me a dmesg (if you could that would be great). If you could post a copy of your kernel .config, that would be great. Let me know what kind of laptop it is, and how old. This looks like an IDE controller issue that could be caused by the driver included in the kernel you are running.

Coldfire

taskara · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2004 1:44 am Post subject:

hmm try booting without ACPI and APIC..
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triwebb1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Oct 2003 Posts: 87

First, it isn't a laptop (not that it really matters), it is just an old computer I threw together a while ago. Second, I might be able to give you a dmesg using the live cd (not the whole thing, that would be a lot of typing), and lastly, I can give you a kernel config. I'll do the kernel config first. Here it is:

taskara · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:50 am Post subject:

what chipset is the mainboard?

whatever chipset it is (intel, via, sis etc) u need to enable that ide driver in the kernel..

look on the southbridge chip.. it should have a brand logo there somewhere..

or load livecd and run

triwebb1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Oct 2003 Posts: 87

Well, if I do the grep part I don't get anything (when running the livecd). But if I drop the grep, I get several things, one of which says "Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 1)."

So, I gues I was right in building in support for the Intel PIIX chipset, right?

taskara · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2004 4:39 am Post subject:

correct!

when you load the livecd, what does

triwebb1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Oct 2003 Posts: 87

Well, lsmod shows a LOT of modules. Probably about 20. None that seem to pertain to the IDE stuff, besides evms. Heres the dmesg:

taskara · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2004 5:35 am Post subject:

hmm.. there are a couple of errors on your hdd there

coldfire · n00b Joined: 27 Jan 2004 Posts: 53 Location: Edmonton, AB

Yeah...it appears that the drive isn't in DMA mode, and it seems that it can't set it. I notice that you are using 2.4.20-xfs. I had a similar problem with the drives connected to a promise controller until I upgraded to a kernel which provided a driver more specifically for the card I had. Perhaps just for troubleshooting purposes, you could disable the 'automatically enable DMA' option in your kernel config and recompile. As well, could you let us know what options your BIOS provides for your HDD? Things such as LBA and such (as Taskara mentioned) could influence this....

coldfire

taskara · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:10 am Post subject:

perhaps try setting udma in the bios, and setting to AUTO rather than specified - a 3.2 gig drive shoudl be able to use LBA
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triwebb1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Oct 2003 Posts: 87

Ok, well, first off, I used the livecd to give you guys those readouts, on the actual install I'm using the 2.6.1 kernel. Second, I don't know if the hard drive/control can handle dma (and definately not udma). The drive and board are at least 5 years old........ It seems that whenever dma is enabled I have issues with it.

Ok, so I'm looking at the bios options, and I have the drive set to autodetect all the heads and that, and it was set to normal mode, but I just changed it to auto. I am going to try it now (it takes a while to begin booting....) Nope, it still doesn't work. So I guess I need to change kernel options.

taskara · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 1:08 am Post subject:

hmm.... I'm not sure what else to suggest to you..

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triwebb1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Oct 2003 Posts: 87

Well, I turned off the setting that automatically enables dma and I am now recompiling the kernel. It takes a long time on a cyrix something-or-other, so it will be a while before I get results.

triwebb1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Oct 2003 Posts: 87

IT WORKS!!! I disabled that option, recompiled, rebooted, and it works! Unfortunately, it does warn me about slow hard drive usage...... But it works

Thanks for all the help, I didn't even realize there was an option to turn on dma by default

taskara · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 1:50 am Post subject:

no worries.. glad I could help

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