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#1 2009-07-16 10:23:42

marmis85
Member
Registered: 2009-07-15
Posts: 10

Weird installation problems

An hearty hello to the Arch community!
This is my first post, but i've been an happy archer for about 2 years.
I never had (till now) a single problem that couldn't be solved by lurking in the darkness of the forums or in the wiki.

This is a fairly long story, you've been warned.

My problems started at the beginning of July, when the hard drive on wich my beloved system was istalled suddenly died.
My hardware was a bit dated so I decided it was time to renew it, and after googling for a while for hardware compatability I decided to buy the following components:

MSI P45 Platinum motherboard
Intel E8400 CPU
4gigs Corsair ram
Nvidia GTX260 GPU
a couple of sata hard drives
a sata dvd burner
500w OCZ PSU

The motherboard selection has been a bit frustrating, but what made me choose this one was this post on an HCL forum
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showp … oduct=4149

I thought everything would be a piece of cake, downloaded and burned the 2009.02 x86_64 image, and started installing, but now I'm experiencing some really weird problems...

The installation process can't get past the root login, hanging almost randomly during the boot process.
I saw it hang while loading initrd, some other times while loading udev events, while cleaning remaining files, while cheching the filesystem... sometimes it made it's way till shell login, but then hanging while logging root.. Only one time i saw a buffer I/O error just after logging.

I googled and searched the forums, and tried every solution i found.. I tried setting the sata mode in the bios to both IDE and AHCI mode, i tried with noapic and/or acpi=off boot parameters, i tried both the x86_64 and i686 images (the md5 checksum were fine) to no avail

Then I started fearing my brand new hardware could be defective....

To check that I decided to try a live Linux Mint "Felicia" cd I burned for my brother. Surprisingly it booted just fine, so I installed it and stressed it for a while, and the really creepy thing ist it works like a charm...

Then I recalled the post on the HCL I mentioned before. He said it was a painful intallation, but he was using the 2008.06 image. I burned the image and tried, and.. well.. it worked! I made an ftp installation, but on first reboot the sistem just hanged randomly as before...

Some other things to mention:
The 2008.06 image uses a 2.6.25 kernel
The 2009.02 image uses a 2.6.28 kernel
Mint "Felicia" uses a 2.6.27 ubuntu kernel (probably slighted midified)
On reboot after ftp install I had a 2.6.30 kernel

This makes me think it could be a problem with newer kernels with my motherboard...

The only thing i did not try is upgrading the motherboard to latest bios, because I need a windows installation and I don't have any, but it seems really strange to me since with that Mint installation everything works just fine..

I made up my mind and registered to the forums, fearing that all those hard reboots will really damage my hardware in the long run..

Does anyone have suggestions or experiences to share?

In the meanwhile I'm sticking with that crappy Mint, but I'd really love to have my beloved arch back sad

Thank you all in advance

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#2 2009-07-16 11:48:08

deej
Member
Registered: 2008-02-08
Posts: 395

Re: Weird installation problems

Just a quick thought - is the psu powerful enough for the 260 ? It should provide at least 35amps on the 12v rail.
I know Mint runs OK... as I say, maybe worth checking out.

Deej

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#3 2009-07-16 12:47:20

marmis85
Member
Registered: 2009-07-15
Posts: 10

Re: Weird installation problems

it should, it has 2 rails 18 amp each... should it not get through POST if it wasn't enough? and under Mint I tried nvidia binary drivers and some 3d stuff with success....

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#4 2009-07-16 16:17:13

jacko
Member
Registered: 2007-11-23
Posts: 840

Re: Weird installation problems

I'd check the bios and turn off anything you don't absolutely need. I had an issue with a bios that had power management built into it and random crashes. You would think the noapci would work, but just case you can try it.

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#5 2009-07-16 16:53:05

deej
Member
Registered: 2008-02-08
Posts: 395

Re: Weird installation problems

marmis85 wrote:

it should, it has 2 rails 18 amp each... should it not get through POST if it wasn't enough? and under Mint I tried nvidia binary drivers and some 3d stuff with success....

You're probably on the bare minimum. Google 'gtx260 power requirements' and you'll begin to see the problems. When I got mine, I booted and all I saw were horizontal and
vertical lines - animated, like a screensaver. I took it back to the supplier along with a camera-shot of the screen, and they replaced the card.
Installed the new card - same result ! I thought for a while and then replaced one sata power line with an ide-to-sata line and bingo, all worked OK. Mind you, this was with
a "JEANTECH JNP-700 - 700W *STORM* ATX POWER SUPPLY UNIIT", courtesy of PcWorld ( sad ).

I don't suggest that this is the cause of your problems, but it can be a problem in itself if you are not aware of it.

Deej

P.S.
        It looks an awesome board !

Last edited by deej (2009-07-16 16:58:32)

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#6 2009-07-16 17:27:44

marmis85
Member
Registered: 2009-07-15
Posts: 10

Re: Weird installation problems

@ deej:
ehehe psu power was one of the other topics i struggled on for a while, till i found this
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/pag … _15_0.html
this guy seems to be using 2 of them in SLI with a 34amp PSU, so i should really be fine...
I'll worry about that when I'll have an X server up and rocking XD

@jacko:
in bios i have the power management feature (green power) turned off, tried with both IDE/AHCI modes for sata and messed IOAPIC/ACPI with no results.. and the fact is that the 2008.06 iso boots and installs fine as does linux mint.
the system hangs while booting the 2009.02 iso and after rebooting with the 2.6.30 kernel installed from core.. this is why i think of a kernel related problem..

and to clarify, i'm not having panics or oops, the system just hangs, and the debugging leds on the mobo are normal..

i talked about that with my fellow employees, and they also think the same..
tonight i'll try installing some other random distros and see what happens.. and tomorrow i'll bring my rig to the office

is there anyone around with a p45 based motherboard?

EDIT:
a quick update
i just tried booting a Ubuntu 9.04 cd with no luck, also tried with noapic and acpi=off and tweaked bios settings
it just hangs while booting around 25% of the phase when u see the bar loading and not going back and fordward (if you know what i mean)
this make me think of a problem with kernels >= 2.6.28, i'll be further investigating...

Last edited by marmis85 (2009-07-16 18:40:42)

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#7 2009-07-16 19:16:51

jacko
Member
Registered: 2007-11-23
Posts: 840

Re: Weird installation problems

If it's a problem with a kernel, there is only one way to figure it out, Git bisect! Good thing you have a fast machine to compile/test with.

Try to find the the last good release and the first bad release, then bisect the whole kernel tree through all the rc-stages, during the release where the issue first arrived.
I wouldn't even waste my time on this though until you can fully say without a doubt that it is a kernel issue. Compiling and testing 13+ kernels can take some amount of time.

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#8 2009-07-16 19:34:42

deej
Member
Registered: 2008-02-08
Posts: 395

Re: Weird installation problems

Could you not 'go interactive' when booting the Ubuntu live cd ?
You know, where you press 'i' during boot-up and it will ask you 'y/n' at
every stage of the boot process. That way you'll see [ I hope ] where it
is having problems.

Deej

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#9 2009-07-18 19:48:16

marmis85
Member
Registered: 2009-07-15
Posts: 10

Re: Weird installation problems

another update, and probably the last in a while:

i also tried upgrading the bios, usb image, further tweaking and a lot lot of other stuff with no result...

yesterday one of my bosses lent me an asus p5q board (also p45 based)
whit this board i could install whit 2009.02 cd, and everything seems to run fine!

so it seams a kernel>=2.6.28 with that msi board... such a shame since that was my favourite one sad

i'll be sticking with the asus p5q for a while and probably try again with msi when an iso with a new kernel will be out (or when i'll have the time and will to mess with archiso and that stuff tongue)

PS: the gtx seems fine with the psu, i'll try with some intense gaming i the next days wink

ty all for the help!

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#10 2009-07-19 19:06:00

onthenickel
Member
From: Earth
Registered: 2009-06-20
Posts: 14

Re: Weird installation problems

marmis85,  I am a linux newbie so I can't give you any advice on that end of things, but as far as your hardware, I would suggest running something like http://www.memtest86.com/ and also I would suggest trying the installation off of a USB device instead of a cdrom drive, or try a cdrom drive that has a history of working correctly....  Just the other day I had a system where I was able to install Windows XP Pro just fine...  When installation was done, it would boot to the desktop... then weird things started happening...  (more weird than is normal for even Windows)  Various clues indicated that the cdrom drive it's self was not working 100%, and replacing the cdrom drive allowed for a normal installation that behaved normally when done.

Anyway, sorry to turn this into a hardware support forum for just a minute...

Last edited by onthenickel (2009-07-19 19:06:35)

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#11 2009-08-08 03:42:10

kadragon
Member
Registered: 2009-08-02
Posts: 2

Re: Weird installation problems

I'm having the same problems and my system is very close the the OP's

Motherboard: MSI P45 Platinum
Processor: Core 2 Duo E8400
Video Card: PCI-E Radeon HD 4850
Sound Card: PCI Creative X-fi XtremeGamer
2 SATA HDDs
2 SATA DVD-ROM Drives
700W Power Supply

I was able to get to an xfce desktop with kernel 2.6.30.4 but it's very unstable.  Here's what I did...
(i was following the beginner's guide so im leaving out the details)
Installed from the 2008.06 cd with the default extra packages
Updated all the packages (pacman -Syu)
installed xorg and ran "Xorg -configure"
added a repository to pacman.conf for my video drivers and installed them
ran "aticonfig --initial"
installed and ran xfce

Notes:
The system was completely stable from the beginning.  If I ran "pacman -Syu --ignore kernel26" I'd have no problems with speed or stability.  Once I updated kernel26, the system became unstable and about 25% of the times I'd boot would fail.  Usually at "updating module dependencies.

aticonfig didn't like it if I didn't have an existing xorg.conf, so I ran "Xorg -configure" before installing them to setup xorg.conf with the vesa drivers.  If i tried it after installing the radeon drivers I'd get an error.  I didn't think about this at the time, but now I think it's from deleting libgl because it conflicts with radeon's libgl.

when I added the hal and fam daemons to rc.conf, I'd fail every boot and one of them had the line "/etc/rc.conf/$1 start" stuck at a random place in the output.  I booted into xubuntu and took out the lines to start those daemons at boot and I was able to login.

Once I got into xfce, I tried to open thunar (window manager) and it froze.  I restarted and it was trying to check the disk for errors but would freeze every time.  I ran "e2fsck -f /dev/sda8" (my arch partition).  Now it doesn't try to check the disk when I boot arch, but I failed to boot 10 times in a row.  One time I made it to the login prompt, but it restarted right after logging in.

BIOS settings:
I played around with evey BIOS setting I could, but nothing seemed to make any difference.  The only time it mattered was when it'd become more unstable when changing settings after updating kernel26.

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#12 2009-09-20 10:50:15

mclang
Member
From: Finland
Registered: 2005-10-24
Posts: 79

Re: Weird installation problems

Any solution to these problems?

Because I too need one... My system is as follows:
- Asus P5Q3 motherboard
- 4GB Corsair DDR3 1300Mhz CL9 memory (dual channel)
- Core Duo 2 E8500
- Western Digital 320GB IDE drive
- Saphire Radeon HD 4850 Vapor-X 1GB
- Nexus 450W PSU

First I had problems while using Windows XP, which were due to 1333 dual channel memories - memories that my board should support, but did not at least not properly. This was solved with help of Corsair forum, by increasing slightly ram and northbridge voltages.

Now to the current problem:
I can't install Arch64 from newest images. The system boots ok, although there are some "bus error" and/or "input/output error" messages between lines. When I try to run "/arch/setup" I get hundreds of error lines stating something like "/.../lib-ui.sh line xxx bus error 4570 dialog" and they run and run until I pres ctrl-c.

I tried also normal i686 image. It gave similar errors during loading, but the setup program started normally. I dared not to try i686 installation to the end because of those errors - and moreover I want to install 64-bit version not i686!

I found from ubuntu forum (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=915165) that I should change following BIOS setting:
- SATA: IDE->AHCI
- Advanced USB: BIOS EHCI Hand-off -> disable
- ACPI 2.0 -> enable
- add to grub line: acpi=off

I'm gonna try these when time permits but meanwhile, can anyone confirm what currently works with p45 motherboards, or is the problem elsewhere? It can't be hardware related because windows has worked several weeks under 100% load (BOINC, HD videoediting etc).


Duettaeánn aef cirrán Cáerme Gláeddyv. Yn á esseáth.

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#13 2009-09-22 18:58:00

mclang
Member
From: Finland
Registered: 2005-10-24
Posts: 79

Re: Weird installation problems

Update to my situation:
I managed to install Arch64 from x86_64 2009.08 netinstall image, but NOT without severe problems. First I did the partitioning with newest SystemRescueCD (using bootable usb), which worked flawlessly.

Then I booted Arch install CD and choose the default boot line without any additional 'acpi=off' lines. Booting was successful although there were some errors that went quickly past. Logging in as root worked alright, as well as '/arch/setup/'. I managed also set time, select mirror and install packages, but my good luck ended there sad

When I started to edit config-files with vi, the system started acting strangely. It didn't halt though, so I was able to try editing from different console, but with no luck. For example trying 'vi /etc/rc.conf' gave short message stating 'Bus error'. Same result with nano.

I bootet again from the CD and added 'acpi=off' line to grub. It gave even more errors than before. Same result with 'noapic' line, so I tried again with no additional grub definitions. This time editing config files worked after mounting the new root partition to /mnt/newroot, but when I tried to mount /dev/sdb2 to /mnt/boot, I got error 'unknown ext2 filesystem' - or something similar.

After still one reboot I managed to edit also menu.lst file, after which I could try booting to real system. First time wasn't successful because the drives I have had swapped places (sdb which was primary during installation was now sda...), but after fixing menu.lst and fstab the booting worked fine - except there still seems to be some errors during booting.

Questions remain:
Do any of you have working p45 motherboard system? Could the problem be that I am trying 64bit version? What can I still try, is there any sense disabling ACPI 2.0 and related things from BIOS?

How about that other grup line - is it 'noapci' or noacpi'?

I also tried to make bootable arch installation usb, but it didn't work out.The note of onthenickel's gave me idea to try again - maybe it is faulty cdrom... But then again if it is cdrom's fault, the system should run now, after installation, without problems right?

Where was booting log located, so that I could check the errors more carefully?


Duettaeánn aef cirrán Cáerme Gláeddyv. Yn á esseáth.

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#14 2009-09-27 06:10:44

mclang
Member
From: Finland
Registered: 2005-10-24
Posts: 79

Re: Weird installation problems

Positive update
It seems that all problems I had with Arch x86_64 have disappeared with latest 2.6.30 kernel. At least I don't see any errors at bootup AND the system has been stable whole day running boinc at 100% processor usage... The only thing I needed to do before installation was change SATA mode from IDE to ACPI and disable EHCI hand-off from BIOS. No additional lines to grub were necessary. And I'm not sure about that ECHI hand-off etither.

But thus I stop my monologue.


Duettaeánn aef cirrán Cáerme Gláeddyv. Yn á esseáth.

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