I got a bit of a chance to do some more investigation today.

I added the following to the kernel line: acpi=off noapic libata.force=noncq 
which resulted in this
append initrd=initrd.img-2.6.32-5-686-bigmem acpi=off noapic libata.force=noncq 
ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=/app/fai/nfsroot boot=live  
FAI_FLAGS=verbose,sshd,createvt FAI_ACTION=install SERVER=mg006 
hostname=c-fs1qa.qa01.groupee-inc.net

Net change, none.  Same error in the same place. format.log attached.

I then sshed to the client and did this

root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md1
mdadm: stopped /dev/md1
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md5
mdadm: stopped /dev/md5
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md6
mdadm: stopped /dev/md6
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md7
mdadm: stopped /dev/md7
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md8
mdadm: stopped /dev/md8
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md9 
mdadm: stopped /dev/md9
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md10
mdadm: stopped /dev/md10
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --stop /dev/md11
mdadm: stopped /dev/md11

No freeze or lock up so next I did this:

root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --assemble --scan
mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md5 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md6 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md7 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md8 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md9 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md10 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md11 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).

Note I didn't yet at this point use --config=/tmp/fai/mdadm-from-examine.conf

root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# cd /
root@c-fs1qa:/# ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  fastboot  home  initrd.img  lib  live  media  mnt  opt  
proc  root  sbin  selinux  srv  sys  target  tmp  usr  var  vmlinuz
root@c-fs1qa:/# mkdir /app
root@c-fs1qa:/# mount /dev/md11 /app
root@c-fs1qa:/# cd /app
root@c-fs1qa:/app# ls
backup  data  eve  imports  lost+found  marzen_logs  mysql  tmp  weblogs

This is the data that was on the hard disc before we started trying to fai 
install this machines. I'm not sure why, but I hadn't expected to see any old 
data on this drive.

I next unmounted /app then issued mdadm --stop --scan

And issued 

root@c-fs1qa:/# mdadm --assemble --scan 
--config=/tmp/fai/mdadm-from-examine.conf
mdadm: /dev/md1 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md5 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md6 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md7 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md8 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md9 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md10 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
mdadm: /dev/md11 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).

So, it'll assemble 

next I did 
root@c-fs1qa:/tmp/fai# mdadm --manage /dev/md8 --add /dev/sdb8
mdadm: re-added /dev/sdb8

So, your tip, Michael, seems to have fixed the issue with the server freezing 
when manipulating mdadm however setup storage still seems to dislike this 
hardware. This is 4.0~beta2+experimental70.

Sorry if this email is too long winded, wanted to be sure that I gave all the 
info that I can

David Dreezer

Attachment: format-logs.c-fs1qa.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data



On Apr 15, 2011, at 6:09 PM, David Dreezer wrote:

> 
>> 
>> Well, everything should be (more or less) fine here, as long as the kernel
>> actually makes use of this. The error messages are simply an oddity of the
>> attempt to export variables here, see
>> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=607285. But this shouldn't
>> pose any problems to its use in the kernel, hence all we need to know is 
>> whether
>> your problems with setup-storage and/or the ATA modules got resolved in this
>> way.
> 
> I still get the same busy error in the same place with this in the kernel 
> line. To be honest I have not had the opportunity to go through the entirety 
> of the bug that you cited and try all of the options that I saw listed. I'll 
> try to do so this weekend.
> 
>> 
>> Hope this helps,
>> Michael
>> 
> 
> Always does, thank you!

Antwort per Email an