[TriLUG] hardware problems -- install won't boot

Matthew Lavigne maillist at shenandoahkennels.net
Tue Mar 30 22:16:41 EST 2004


> Just a gut instinct, I don't think it's the drive.  From the information
>  you've provided my money would be on the motherboard.  Try
I would agree about the motherboard.  First thing that I would do would be
to check all the capacitors on the MB.  IF you see ANY bulging, or
discolored I would RMA the MB with Dell.

> I'd  then yank all the cards out and repeat the
> process.  At that point you  should be down to mb, processor, ram (not
> likely if memtest is actually  locking up), floppy drive, or floppy
> cable.  Of those options, 9 times  out of 10 it's the mb.

I agree completely here but I would ensure that you have the single stick
of memory in the "slot 1".  Occasionally the OEMS like to make the memory
be required to be the the correct slot if it is a single.  Verify that the
BIOS sees the correct amount of the RAM.  You may see a slight decrease if
you have Video Ram being sucked out of the system RAM but if the MB is < 2
yrs old then it *should* not be using system RAM.

When running MemTest...  disable the RAID controller or pull it from the
system.  There are instances that RAID controllers load BIOS in to funky
spots and can b0rk DOS applicaitions (like loadlin or memtest)


>> there are 3 identical drives in it on an IDE RAID controller.
>> Whenever I have all three drives active in the logical drive (RAID 0),
>>  then the install will complete, but when it comes time to boot, I get
>>  a kernel panic:
>> crcerror<6> freeing initrd memory:
>> VFS: cannot open root device "LABEL=/" or 00:00
>> Please append a correct "root=" boot option
>> Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 00:00
>>

Have you tried rescue mode/chroot here?  If so and you can mount the hard
drives then I would suspect that the issue is the initrd/modules that are
being loaded on boot.  If you don't have the IDE RAID controller modules
in the initrd then you can't get to the / and then you can't load the
modules (the whole chicken & the egg thing).
You can take apart the initrd to look.. if you need to know how then
either drop me a note or catch me on IRC. (or you can google it)

>> If i do the install with a certain drive (channel 3) not included in
>> the logical drive, then it boots up fine.  This makes me think that
>> the drive is bad...

OK what controller is this?  Adaptec? Host RAID?  A little more info would
help me on this as I am not sure about the configuration. I have only used
Promise controllers with 2 channels and you sound like it is something
different.

>>  it on each stick of memory individually, but got the same results.  I
>>  think this might have something to do with the fact that memtest was
>> on a CD, and I was unable to set the ECC option (there is ECC ram in
>> it).

See comment on verifying "how" to run a single stick.

>>
>> So, I plan on calling Dell and warranting the drive, but wanted to
>> make sure there isn't anything I haven't tried yet to pinpoint the
>> problem...  I think that the fact that an install works without the
>> drive, but not with the drive tells me a lot... But I might put
>> memtest on a floppy just to be sure...
>>
>> thanks for listening ;-)
>>
>> -rtw


Hope it helps

Matthew





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