I'm having trouble getting the Red Hat 6 GA materials to load onto CKD disks.
(As always I apologize for a long email. I want to be complete, in case someone else has a similar issue.) The error message is: An error was encountered while formatting device /dev/dasdb1. invalid device specification This is shown in the window "Formatting Failed". Advice, please? The steps I take in detail: - I start the installation on the SSH session with userid "install". After identifying the source of the installation (URL, an internal HTTP server) I then log onto the root userid. I'm using a text-based installation (not VNC). - I can see /dev/dasda, /dev/dasdb and /dev/dasdc. Each of these disks had been previously formatted with the CMS FORMAT command. - On the root userid (before I respond "OK" to the Red Hat splash screen) I fdisk each /dev/dasd disk, allocating the primary partition 1 using all available space on the disk. Since I gave all space to primary partition one I do not do anything with partion two through 4. - I do a mkswap on /dev/dasda1. For disks /dev/dasdb1 and /dev/dasdc1 I format each disk using EXT2. A MOUNT shows that each disk is of the expected size for the number of cylinders (about 2GB). My goal is to use DASDa is a small swap disk. DASDb & DASDc are used for the installation of a stripped down RH 6. - Proceeding on the SSH session for user install, I do the following: - Respond to the "OK" at the splash screen. - On the Partitioning Type window I "use entire drive" and ensure that only /dev/dasdb and /dev/dasdc are selected for use during installation. I select OK to continue. - A window opens "Writing storage configuration to disk" asking if I really want to write the changes to disk. I select that button. - The installation fails with the window "Formatting failed": An error was encountered while formatting device /dev/dasdb1. invalid device specification The Red Hat doc at http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/pdf/Install ation_Guide/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-6-Installation_Guide-en-US.pdf shows a detailed installation using a GUI. I cannot use VNC even on our internal network, hence I'm using a textual install. The RH 6 PDF referenced above doesn't show an example textual installation. And the GUI installation shows a differing path for CKD disks. In the GUI installation (step 23.6 in the doc) a panel allows Specialized Storage Devices. Perhaps I must be using this path? Here's the PRM file I'm using: root=/dev/ram0 ro ip=off ramdisk_size=40000 mpath cio_ignore=all,!0.0.0009 DASD="200-202" SUBCHANNELS="0.0.0c00,0.0.0c01,0.0.0c02" HOSTNAME="linux024.ca.com" SEARCHDNS="ca.com" NETTYPE="qeth" IPADDR="141.202.200.124" NETMASK="255.255.255.0" GATEWAY="141.202.200.101" DNS="141.202.1.108" MTU="1500" LAYER2=0 PORTNAME="OSD02" PORTNO=0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
