Critical problem when trying to boot from a SATA drive

Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

Hello guys,

I'm currently trying to install Gentoo on an Amilo 3438 for a friend. (sadly this great message is not mine

)
Knoppix starts well on this machine, the cdrom-drive is /dev/hda and the harddrive is /dev/sda.
(Ubuntu and FedoraCore4 fails to install on this machine because of acpi problems)

Installation of Gentoo went well until I tried to boot it with a self configured kernel.
No matter what I tried, it always produced the kernel panic.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject:

Jinidog,

This

Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

I tried just the SATA-drivers at first and just tried it with the IDE-drivers because it didn't work.
I'll try what you said but probably it won't help because I had it like that before.
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Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

As I said, nothing changed.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:29 pm Post subject:

Jinidog,

The liveCD runs a fully modular kernel. Boot the liveCD and run lsmod
What does it use?
Have some of the same but make the driver modules built in.

Also chech you are doing your kernel installs correctly - look at the file timestamps in /boot.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

erikm · l33t Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 634

Assuming you have the correct SATA modules configured, preferrably checked using NeddySeagoon's method, you could also try passing the 'doscsi' kernel parameter, so that your grub kernel line reads

Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

I have only Knoppix available. It doesn't list anything interesting about the SATA stuff.
(the SATA chipset support must be compiled in, I think)

Everything is okay with the kernels. I'm booting the right one.
Putting doscsi on the command line does not help either.

It's quite sure that I'm using the right sata-chipset support.
It's ICH6.
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Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

Hello,

the problem still exists.
I recently updated the BIOS, that did not help.
I cannot understand this, maybe I try a 2.6.11 kernel, other people have Gentoo running on this kind of laptop and no such problems.
Someone posted a config-file in a thread about sound problems with this laptop, but I cannot find any hint in it, what is wrong
with mine.
You can find it here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2752474.html
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject:

Jinidog,

The boot order is like this, starting at power on ...
The CPU fetches the first instruction from 0xffffc.
Checks all the things in Power On Self Test.
Sets UP PCI things.
Runs initialisation code for on board things (from BIOS)
Runs initialisation code on PCI cards (if any)
Loads the contents of the MBR
Jumps to the start of the MBR. (The BIOS is done now)

If grub is in the MBR then ...
Grub stage 1 loads stage 1.5 and hands over to it.
Grub stage 1.5 loads stage 2, which shows the splash screen and waits for the timeout or your command.
Grub loads the kernel image and the initrd (if any) and hands over to the kernel.

The kernel decomresses and goes through its set up.
The kernel tries to mount root, using the info grub left for it from the kernel line in grub.conf.

To mount root, the kernel needs to be able to communicate with the HDD at a low level (the chip set driver), at a high level (the SCSI disk driver) and it needs to be able to understand what it reads, (the filesystem driver)

Your unknown block (0,0) means your kernel is missing one of the first two items. The SCSI disk driver or the low level SATA driver. They must both be built in [*] and not modules [M]. Its difficult to read the module when you need the module to read the disk that is storing the module.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

Thanks for the tip.
But I already did all that.
I have the SCSI-disk support compiled in. (no modules, I know the problem of loading modules without being able to read the filesystem

)
Testwise I compiled in all SATA-chip drivers (in another thread someone said that I need the VIA SATA driver; but that did not help either) but that did not help.

I slowly believe in a kernel bug or something like that.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 4:35 pm Post subject:

Jinidog,

I tend more to an improperly installed kernel file. I belive you are doing all the right things in the config and make for your kernel but not getting it installed correctly.

Since you have knoppix, please post the output of

Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

I don't think that you will find a mistake here.
I don't use a boot-partition.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 5:13 pm Post subject:

Jinidog,

That all looks good. However, I've loaded your kernel config from your first post into

Jinidog · Guru Joined: 26 Nov 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Berlin

Big Thanks.
normally I don't have this "Advanced Partition" stuff in my kernel, but I put it in for a try.
Probably the real problem were somewhere else, I removed it and didn't see it because this was still in.

Thanks.
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