kernel not booting.

[trn]

ok, i've gone through my 7th or 8th gentoo attempted install.. to many to count anymore. This time i got a boot loader, grub, to work but when it boots up the kernel it freezes while trying to detect 2 ide drives i have on my promise raid card. #^%$%$@# i dont' know whats going on here.. i have the promise card options in the kernel configured and while booting it says:

PDC20265: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 30
PDC20265: chipset revision 2
ide: Found promise 20265 in RAID mode.
PDC20265: not 100% native mode: wile probe irqs later
PDC20265: (u)dma burs bit enabled primary master mode second master mode.
ide2: bm-dma at 0xa400-0xa407, Bios settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
ide3: bm-dma at 0xa400-0xa40f, bios settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio


but then when going through the normal ide detection it goes

hda: blah blah (my non raid drive that i boot off of)
hdb: cdrom blah blah
hdc: cdrom blah blahafld
hdd: another cdromfsdalfsda;fds

then next usally it would detect hde and g, the two drives on the promise ide raid card but instead it just freezes and the cursor sits there blinking forever with the hd light on and gives no error msg.

Anyways i'm quite stumped i tried looking over my kernel and compiling twice with some different options.. but just the same. This is odd to me since every other linux distro i have tried has had zero problems here and when i boot off the live cd it works fine. So from what i can figure its defently an error with my kernel but i'm totally stumped. Ive had this setup working fine with many other distros before.

Thanks in Advance.

[ebrostig]

Ok, I can see your frustration. I do not have a Promise card but if you could post the kernel boot log, I'd be more than happy to investigate it.

You can get the boot log by booting with the LiveCD and mount your drives like you do during install. The log is under var/log/kernel. It may contain more info.

You can also post your .config file as it will show what options you have select during kernel config.

Last question, which version and what ebuild of the kernel are you using?

Erik
_________________
'Yes, Firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

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thanks, i'm going to go get the log and conf now.. i found one other person on the fourm who has the exact same problem with a similar hardware config https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=42007&highlight=promise+raid . Also i was using the 2.4.20-gentoo-r1 kernel.

edit: hmmm there is no kernel log and i can't seem to make the floppy work to copy the kernel config.. take a look at the other guys though, he has pretty much the identical problem with the 2.4.20-gentoo-r1 kernel and has configs and more detailed description there. i think i'll go see if i can emerge some other kernels and give them a try because it sounds like this might be a bug specific to the 2.4.20-gentoo-r1 kernel.

[ebrostig]

Ok, I see...

I'm not sure if this is a general kernel issue or a Gentoo specific one.

Can I recommend that you try the following:

emerge ck-sources (That is Con Koliva's excellent 2.4.20 version. I have used it for a long time)
emerge development-sources (That is the 2.5.x version, but it may have better support for the Promose cards)

Try to build both and set up Grub with both of them and try to boot the machine again and let us know the result.

Erik
_________________
'Yes, Firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

[trn]

Thanks alot for the help, i just emerged and compiled the vanilla 2.4.20 kernel and everything seems to be working great.. i'll look in to that ck kernel another time but right now i'm just glad i got things working finially