Question

Centos fails to reboot after install on Dell 2650

Asked by: nsriram


This is a Dell 2650 with 2 SCSI drives (each 136 gb).. I have set it up as one container (one volume, no raid) so that the os should see it as 272 gb (which it does).. I am able to install centos 5.3 from the install cds (I chose server gui) but on reboot after installation is complete, it hangs.. It does seem to load grub.. but then I see 2 error message.. one seems to indicate something is wrong with a memory address and in the second it times out waiting to hear from the scsi adapter (waits for 22 s in an infinite loop).

would like to hear about possible ways to fix this; I read on another thread that one is supposed to give some startup parameters during install to let the OS talk to the adaptec controller correctly.

I did try initially to set it up as raid 1 using the Ctrl-A but it appears that the scrub process percentage indicator didnt seem to change (or maybe I just didnt wait long enough)

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Asked On
2009-04-20 at 12:18:57ID24338872
Topics

Computer Servers

,

CentOS

Participating Experts
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: ComputerTechiePosted on 2009-04-20 at 14:25:11ID: 24188874

I would rebuild the Raid and reformat the drives than install OS.

CT

 

by: ComputerTechiePosted on 2009-04-20 at 14:27:21ID: 24188897

One other thing i would double check the RAM with memtest.86  http://www.memtest.org/

CT

 

by: nsriramPosted on 2009-04-20 at 15:53:55ID: 24189492

the OS did install fine..the problem is at the bootup phase AFTER the install.. So its not clear why that would happen.. I assume its ok NOT to use the RAID (i.e have all the space as one volume)..

 

by: nsriramPosted on 2009-04-20 at 15:55:51ID: 24189498

I should mention that the system had a functioning linux distro on it earlier (some version of redhat) and it did have the bootup menu on start (unfortunately I didnt check the raid config at that time, if any).. so I doubt that its a hardware issue.

 

by: sifueditionPosted on 2009-04-21 at 08:45:02ID: 24195755

Make sure that you have disabled the raid in the system bios if you are not going to use it.  That could be the reason for the issue.  If it is not disabled, you will need the raid driver to connect to the drives properly.  

For my two cents, I like the hardware raid option better.  I have seen a lot of reliability in these setups.  If you don't want to lose any space to a raid configuration, the controller is capable of Raid 0 which will allow you to use all of the space.  

The scrub is important to the process of creating the array.  This is how the controller will align the sectors and build the metadata.  The scrub can take up to two to five minutes per GB of array space.  I would let the scrub continue until it has had that much time.  If it is stuck trying to do the scrub, you may have a hardware issue in the raid/scsi or harddrives.  Because you finished that install, I do not believe that is the most likely scenario.

More likely is that the controller was attempting a scrub while you were installing.  If the install gets ahead of the scrub, the scrub may be wiping data right behind the install.  That can lead to the situation you described.  That is why I was concerned you may not have disabled the raid controller properly.

 

by: nsriramPosted on 2009-04-21 at 12:52:25ID: 24198419

Turns out that I just had to wait for 20 minutes during the boot process for it to probe all the scsi devices and after that it proceeded as normal.. I turned off the cluster mode in the cmos setup but I dont think that was relevant..

so the problem turned out to be a non-problem.. (solution: wait for boot up to finish.. hopefully it doesnt do it on later boots)

 

by: sifueditionPosted on 2009-04-21 at 13:13:41ID: 24198667

The cluster mode will actually have a significant effect, but that is moot if it is off now and the system booted. Glad to hear it.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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