Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
* John Lightsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-01-22 10:02]: Well I just spent a few hours backing some changes out of arch/alpha/kernel/pci.c and compiling a new 2.4.24 kernel, but I'm coming up empty handed. The diff between 2.4.19 and 2.4.20 is 70 lines long. At any rate, this report should probably be closed. All of the installer related issues have been addressed. Can you try beta4 to see if it still works on your Alpha? Also, maybe this bug report should be reassigned to the kernel? -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
Sent this to the wrong address. Sorry. On Wednesday 21 January 2004 09:19 pm, you wrote: On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 05:26:28PM -0600, John Lightsey wrote: Ah, so at no point did you pick Install aboot on a hard disk as an option from the main menu? Do you see this as an option? Is it listed in the wrong place in the menu (i.e., below finish the installation and reboot)? It's not listed as an option on the menu. Should it be there from the start or does it appear after doing something else? Just to confirm, did you download the sid image or the sarge (non-sid) image? Currently, aboot-installer is only present in the sid build of the CDs, since it has not yet been included in testing (and won't until it's frozen into beta2, AIUI). Ahh.. That must explain it. I used the sarge-alpha-netinst.iso. I'm currently downloading the sid iso to verify that aboot-installer is really there, but it *shouldn't* have gone anywhere. :) Yep, this problem makes both my SCSI controller and my ethernet unusable under 2.4.24. Did any kernels work for you in the 2.4 series? I haven't had this machine long, and none of the recent Debian 2.4.2x kernels have worked for me. Kernels up through 2.4.19 worked reliably on all alphas that I know of; the DMA and PCI bridge problems first seemed to manifest in 2.4.20 or 21. This is of course not a great answer, given the security fixes in .23 and .24. Well I just spent a few hours backing some changes out of arch/alpha/kernel/pci.c and compiling a new 2.4.24 kernel, but I'm coming up empty handed. The diff between 2.4.19 and 2.4.20 is 70 lines long. At any rate, this report should probably be closed. All of the installer related issues have been addressed. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
Steve Langasek wrote: cough The best method I've found so far is to switch to console #2 as soon as the language question comes up, and remove the troublesome modules from /lib/modules/version/kernel/. You can also boot the installer with DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low, in which case it will still try to probe all the modules in order, but at least it will let you specify options to insmod that will break the attempt to load it (pain...). I'm thinking about adding a medium priority multiselect question to hw-detect to let the user de-select modules, FWIW. -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
Just tried the newest installer daily build (with 2.4.24 kernel) and it gets through the ide-detect portion without any trouble. I can do everything other than bringing up the network interface. The only other trouble I noticed is that the aboot.conf that is generated doesn't point to the proper location of my root filesystem. The installer kept going back to the configure network option even though I couldn't bring the network up, so it may be a case where I did something out of order. I did not repartition. I did reformat my old partitions with the root as the A partition. Anyway, my original problem is fixed. As far as the nic problem goes, it's something that will have to be fixed in the kernel. This thread is illuminating: http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2004/debian-alpha-200401/msg00052.html Hopefully a working 2.6 or 2.4 kernel will be released before Sarge is. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
Hi John, On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 01:30:06PM -0600, John Lightsey wrote: Just tried the newest installer daily build (with 2.4.24 kernel) and it gets through the ide-detect portion without any trouble. I can do everything other than bringing up the network interface. The only other trouble I noticed is that the aboot.conf that is generated doesn't point to the proper location of my root filesystem. The installer kept going back to the configure network option even though I couldn't bring the network up, so it may be a case where I did something out of order. I did not repartition. I did reformat my old partitions with the root as the A partition. Can you provide more details regarding what your aboot.conf looks like after installing, what you believe it should look like, and the contents of your partition tables? I was proud of that bit of code in aboot-installer, so if it has bugs, I'd like to get them fixed. ;) The configure network glitch you're seeing has to do with this being a *net*inst image: it really, really, really wants you to have a network, because it knows you're not booting from a full CD. :) Anyway, my original problem is fixed. As far as the nic problem goes, it's something that will have to be fixed in the kernel. This thread is illuminating: http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2004/debian-alpha-200401/msg00052.html Does this mean you have one of the P1SE/P2SE integrated cards, or something similar that results in the use of a PCI bridge on your system? Hopefully a working 2.6 or 2.4 kernel will be released before Sarge is. Yes, the general state of alpha support in the late 2.4-series kernels seems quite dismal. :/ Regards, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
The only other trouble I noticed is that the aboot.conf that is generated doesn't point to the proper location of my root filesystem. The installer kept going back to the configure network option even though I couldn't bring the network up, so it may be a case where I did something out of order. I did not repartition. I did reformat my old partitions with the root as the A partition. Can you provide more details regarding what your aboot.conf looks like after installing, what you believe it should look like, and the contents of your partition tables? I was proud of that bit of code in aboot-installer, so if it has bugs, I'd like to get them fixed. ;) The configure network glitch you're seeing has to do with this being a *net*inst image: it really, really, really wants you to have a network, because it knows you're not booting from a full CD. :) Makes sense. I'll go through the install again and note exactly what I'm doing and what aboot.conf ends up looking like Boot from SRM (boot dkb100 -flags 0) Select american-english as the language IDE auto detection takes place (somewhere between this step and the next one tty2 shows modprobe: failed to load ide-disk. It's before isofs is loaded.) Sometimes it will prompt me saying that the cdrom wasn't detected, sometimes it doesn't. It takes the 2.4.24-generic kernel a minute or so to figure out that DMA isn't going to work. Module needed by your ethernet card: only option presented is none of the above At this point I start skipping ahead because I know my network card isn't going to work. Load installer components. Select the cd loader Select choose-mirror Again, module needed by your ethernet card: only option presented is none of the above My harddrives are already partitioned like this: /dev/hda1 ext2 /dev/hda2 swap /dev/hdb1 ext2 HDA is partitioned in BSD disklabel format (hda1 is A:) HDB is partitioned in the standard way. Configure and mount partitions (switching to tty2 shows ext3, reiserfs, jfs and xfs modules failing to load.) IDE1 master, part. 1 - ext2 - / IDE1 master, part. 2 - swap -swap IDE2 master, part. 1 - ext2 - /home I tell it to format all of them, hit finish and yes at the warning screen. tty2 shows them being formatted and mounted Again module needed by your ethernet card: and again none of the above Install the base system everything goes fine. Again module needed by your ethernet card: and again none of the above. Install the kernel. I select 2.4-generic. This spends a lot of time at 60% then goes back to the Module needed by your ethernet card: I again pick none of the above. Finish the installation and reboot. cd pops out. hit continue to reboot. I have to cycle the power to keep SRM from loading off the cdrom again. boot dka0 -flags 0 aboot: valid disklabel found: 2 partitions aboot: invalid partition 3 aboot: mount of partition 3 failed Now I get an aboot prompt. aboot boot vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 initrd=/initrd.img System boots up with a few DMA timeouts along the way. Base-config runs without any trouble (don't have a network connection though.) The only oddity is that when I configure exim for local delivery only it asks for a system mail name and an IP address to listen on but does not ask who I want root's mail delivered to. alpha:~# cat /etc/aboot.conf # # aboot default configurations # 0:3/vmlinux.gz ro root=/dev/sda2 1:3/vmlinux.old.gz ro root=/dev/sda2 2:3/vmlinux.new.gz ro root=/dev/sda2 3:3/vmlinux ro root=/dev/sda2 8:- ro root=/dev/sda2# fs less boot of raw kernel 9:0/- ro root=/dev/sda2 # fs less boot of (compressed) ECOFF kernel - alpha:~# what it needs to be is: 0:1/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 initrd=/initrd.img Anyway, my original problem is fixed. As far as the nic problem goes, it's something that will have to be fixed in the kernel. This thread is illuminating: http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2004/debian-alpha-200401/msg00052.ht ml Does this mean you have one of the P1SE/P2SE integrated cards, or something similar that results in the use of a PCI bridge on your system? The integrated network card is definitely taking across a PCI bridge. Anything I plug into the PCI slots also seems to be taking across the PCI bridge. That thread describes exactly the sort of trouble I've been having with 2.4 kernels. It's not limited to network cards. They are just the most visibly broken. The 2.2.22 kernel in Woody works flawlessly. If there was a 2.2 kernel in Unstable I'd have no problems at all. Hopefully a working 2.6 or 2.4 kernel will be released before Sarge is. Yes, the general state of alpha support in the late 2.4-series kernels seems quite dismal. :/ Regards, Thanks for your time.. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 04:13:01PM -0600, John Lightsey wrote: The only other trouble I noticed is that the aboot.conf that is generated doesn't point to the proper location of my root filesystem. The installer kept going back to the configure network option even though I couldn't bring the network up, so it may be a case where I did something out of order. I did not repartition. I did reformat my old partitions with the root as the A partition. Can you provide more details regarding what your aboot.conf looks like after installing, what you believe it should look like, and the contents of your partition tables? I was proud of that bit of code in aboot-installer, so if it has bugs, I'd like to get them fixed. ;) The configure network glitch you're seeing has to do with this being a *net*inst image: it really, really, really wants you to have a network, because it knows you're not booting from a full CD. :) My harddrives are already partitioned like this: /dev/hda1 ext2 /dev/hda2 swap /dev/hdb1 ext2 HDA is partitioned in BSD disklabel format (hda1 is A:) HDB is partitioned in the standard way. Configure and mount partitions (switching to tty2 shows ext3, reiserfs, jfs and xfs modules failing to load.) IDE1 master, part. 1 - ext2 - / IDE1 master, part. 2 - swap -swap IDE2 master, part. 1 - ext2 - /home I tell it to format all of them, hit finish and yes at the warning screen. tty2 shows them being formatted and mounted Again module needed by your ethernet card: and again none of the above Install the kernel. I select 2.4-generic. This spends a lot of time at 60% then goes back to the Module needed by your ethernet card: I again pick none of the above. Finish the installation and reboot. cd pops out. hit continue to reboot. I have to cycle the power to keep SRM from loading off the cdrom again. Ah, so at no point did you pick Install aboot on a hard disk as an option from the main menu? Do you see this as an option? Is it listed in the wrong place in the menu (i.e., below finish the installation and reboot)? alpha:~# cat /etc/aboot.conf # # aboot default configurations # 0:3/vmlinux.gz ro root=/dev/sda2 1:3/vmlinux.old.gz ro root=/dev/sda2 2:3/vmlinux.new.gz ro root=/dev/sda2 3:3/vmlinux ro root=/dev/sda2 8:- ro root=/dev/sda2# fs less boot of raw kernel 9:0/- ro root=/dev/sda2 # fs less boot of (compressed) ECOFF kernel - alpha:~# what it needs to be is: 0:1/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 initrd=/initrd.img Yep, the aboot.conf cited above is the default shipped with the aboot package. While this could mean aboot-installer failed miserably without telling you, from above it sounds like aboot-installer simply was never run on your system. Does this mean you have one of the P1SE/P2SE integrated cards, or something similar that results in the use of a PCI bridge on your system? The integrated network card is definitely taking across a PCI bridge. Anything I plug into the PCI slots also seems to be taking across the PCI bridge. That thread describes exactly the sort of trouble I've been having with 2.4 kernels. It's not limited to network cards. They are just the most visibly broken. Yep, this problem makes both my SCSI controller and my ethernet unusable under 2.4.24. The 2.2.22 kernel in Woody works flawlessly. If there was a 2.2 kernel in Unstable I'd have no problems at all. Not likely to happen, I'm afraid... but maybe we can get a 2.6.1 that works instead. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
Ah, so at no point did you pick Install aboot on a hard disk as an option from the main menu? Do you see this as an option? Is it listed in the wrong place in the menu (i.e., below finish the installation and reboot)? It's not listed as an option on the menu. Should it be there from the start or does it appear after doing something else? Yep, this problem makes both my SCSI controller and my ethernet unusable under 2.4.24. Did any kernels work for you in the 2.4 series? I haven't had this machine long, and none of the recent Debian 2.4.2x kernels have worked for me. The 2.2.22 kernel in Woody works flawlessly. If there was a 2.2 kernel in Unstable I'd have no problems at all. Not likely to happen, I'm afraid... but maybe we can get a 2.6.1 that works instead. Well, the 2.4.19 kernel that SuSE ships for alpha seems to work (their installer can bring up my network card) but it doesn't compile with GCC 3.3. It would be nice to figure out exactly which patch broke things. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 05:26:28PM -0600, John Lightsey wrote: Ah, so at no point did you pick Install aboot on a hard disk as an option from the main menu? Do you see this as an option? Is it listed in the wrong place in the menu (i.e., below finish the installation and reboot)? It's not listed as an option on the menu. Should it be there from the start or does it appear after doing something else? Just to confirm, did you download the sid image or the sarge (non-sid) image? Currently, aboot-installer is only present in the sid build of the CDs, since it has not yet been included in testing (and won't until it's frozen into beta2, AIUI). I'm currently downloading the sid iso to verify that aboot-installer is really there, but it *shouldn't* have gone anywhere. :) Yep, this problem makes both my SCSI controller and my ethernet unusable under 2.4.24. Did any kernels work for you in the 2.4 series? I haven't had this machine long, and none of the recent Debian 2.4.2x kernels have worked for me. Kernels up through 2.4.19 worked reliably on all alphas that I know of; the DMA and PCI bridge problems first seemed to manifest in 2.4.20 or 21. This is of course not a great answer, given the security fixes in .23 and .24. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
Thanks for the report. We have 2.4.24 kernel images in the archive for d-i, but I hadn't yet switched to using them for the daily builds. This is done now, and tomorrow's ISOs should be 2.4.24-based. Would you be willing to give them a try? I'd be happy to. Is there any way of skipping the IDE detection or telling it not to try different chipsets? Have you filed a bug on the kernel-image packages about the tulip/de4x5 issue, by chance? No, I'm 99% certain that the problem isn't really in the ethernet drivers. It's the machine's buggy PCI/IDE chipset causing the drivers to fail. If I put another network card in one of the PCI slots it will also fail. From my understanding, the problems with these particular machines have been known for a while. http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2003/debian-alpha-200308/msg00082.html The odd thing is that the 2.4.2x Debian kernels do boot and appear to function properly (outside of bringing up a network interface.) I would expect it to work in the installer if you can still skip the network configuration. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 04:33:44AM -0600, John Lightsey wrote: Thanks for the report. We have 2.4.24 kernel images in the archive for d-i, but I hadn't yet switched to using them for the daily builds. This is done now, and tomorrow's ISOs should be 2.4.24-based. Would you be willing to give them a try? I'd be happy to. Is there any way of skipping the IDE detection or telling it not to try different chipsets? cough The best method I've found so far is to switch to console #2 as soon as the language question comes up, and remove the troublesome modules from /lib/modules/version/kernel/. You can also boot the installer with DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low, in which case it will still try to probe all the modules in order, but at least it will let you specify options to insmod that will break the attempt to load it (pain...). Our real goal, of course, is to get the autodetection right so it doesn't *try* IDE chipset modules that will cause problems. Have you filed a bug on the kernel-image packages about the tulip/de4x5 issue, by chance? No, I'm 99% certain that the problem isn't really in the ethernet drivers. It's the machine's buggy PCI/IDE chipset causing the drivers to fail. If I put another network card in one of the PCI slots it will also fail. From my understanding, the problems with these particular machines have been known for a while. http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2003/debian-alpha-200308/msg00082.html The odd thing is that the 2.4.2x Debian kernels do boot and appear to function properly (outside of bringing up a network interface.) I would expect it to work in the installer if you can still skip the network configuration. Hrm, very strange. And on your system, which module does d-i try for your ethernet card -- the one that hangs, or the one that just doesn't work? Anyway, the images should be posted by this point -- feel free to give them a try. Thanks again, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Bug#228654: installation-reports: ide-detect lockup on Alpha PWS500a
Package: installation-reports INSTALL REPORT Debian-installer-version: 18 Jan 04 version of sarge-alpha-netinst.iso uname -a: Linux alpha 2.2.20 #2 Wed Mar 20 19:57:28 EST 2002 alpha GNU/Linux Date: 18 Jan 04 23:00 CST Method: SRM console Machine: DEC Personal Workstation 500a Processor: Alpha 21164 500MHZ Memory: 128MB Output of lspci: 00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21142/43 (rev 30) 00:04.0 IDE interface: CMD Technology Inc PCI0646 (rev 01) 00:07.0 Non-VGA unclassified device: Intel Corp. 82378IB [SIO ISA Bridge] (rev 43) 00:14.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21052 (rev 02) 01:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10) 01:0a.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE] Base System Installation Checklist: Initial boot worked:[O] Configure network HW: [ ] Config network: [ ] Detect CD: [E] Load installer modules: [ ] Detect hard drives: [ ] Partition hard drives: [ ] Create file systems:[ ] Mount partitions: [ ] Install base system:[ ] Install boot loader:[ ] Reboot: [ ] [O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it Comments/Problems: Works fine until the ide-detect module is loaded. At that point the system hangs. Starting installation with DEBCONF_DEBUG=5, then switching to console 3 shows the last command as insmod adma100 This system has never been particularly happy with the 2.4.x kernels in Debian. It boots fine off 2.2 kernels. Manually upgrading the 2.4.24-1-generic seems to work until either of the de4x5 or tulip network drivers are installed and the network is brought up. Tulip will hang the system, de4x5 times out dhclient. John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
