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Hi all,
there is a Mac Pro desktop computer on which I want to put archlinux. Since I collected already some experience with arch and how to install it I used the latest live CD, created threes LVM volumes (for /, home and swap) and installed it. I did not put boot on a LVM volume, but rather on a small ext2 partition. There also is another small partition for EFI. After many attempts I eventually got GRUB2-EFI to start my kernel (3.1). Unfortunately, the booting comes not very far as the volume group where the actual system is installed is not found. (Actually no volume group is found.) After the kernel informed me about that I get dropped to a rescue shell, but there the keyboard doesn't work. If I boot back into the live CD and chroot into the system everything works fine.
I put the dm-mod module into mkinitcpio.conf's MODULE array and also have there lvm2 in the HOOKS array. In rc.conf USELVM is set to "yes". Do you have some other ideas what the problem could be here?
The first messages of the kernel are actually only errors:
pci 0000:00:03:0 ignoring class 600 (dosn't match header type 0)
...
i8042: No controller found
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7 Found HC with no IRQ. Check BIOS/PCI 0000:00:1d.7 setup!
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7 init 0000:00:1d.7 fail, -19
...
No volume groups found
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-lvolsys'.
...
sh: can't access tty; job control turned offEdit: So I found a bug report that more or less describes my problem: #18810. Unfortunately none of the tricks mentioned there worked. I even updated the LiveCD system and copied the kernel as well as the initrd image to the "real" system -- this did result in the same situation as before. I noticed that when I use "fakebios" in the group menu item and add the "noefi" kernel parameter the LVM volume groups are found.Unfortunately I freezes while waiting for the the UDev events to be processed. In particular I get the following output from the real system loading:
:: Adjusting system time and setting kernel timezone [DONE]
:: Starting UDev Daemon [DONE]
:: Triggering UDev uevents [DONE]
:: Waiting for UDev uevents to be processed [BUSY]I waited for about 5 minutes, but it just halted there. But at least I get the LVM volume groups to be activated. The problem not loading it seems indeed be linked to the EFI boot. All error messages after the i8042 error disappeared, though. At least, like I said, it works when circumventing EFI with "fakebios" and "noefi". Also, I noticed that the LiveCD presents a message before doing anything that is parses EFI information (I got to look for the particular message). This does not happen with the installed system. I guess the next thing I will try is to use archboot and see if a reinstall helps.
Edit: There is actually no message about EFI at the very beginning of the LiveCD boot. It just notes that it is parsing the ELF header, I got this wrong :-). Anyway, I added the "--debug" option to the udevadm settle call in /etc/rc.d/functions. This now leads to the following output:
:: Adjusting system time and setting kernel timezone [DONE]
:: Starting UDev Daemon [DONE]
:: Triggering UDev uevents [DONE]
:: Waiting for UDev uevents to be processed [FAIL]
:: Bringing up loopback interfaces [DONE]
:: Activating LVM2 Groups [BUSY]And there it hangs again, very likely still because of UDev. It is failing after all to wait for the events to be processed.
Edit: The [FAIL] of the UDev events processing was actually caused by me. I placed the "--debug" statement not after "udevadm", but after "settle". Is must read "udevadm --debug settle ...". Well, now the system hangs again at this line and is waiting for the UDev uevents to be processed. So I am stuck at the place of the first edit again. Even with the debug option I don't get any more output. My next try is to patch the kernel to use the EFI physical mode. Unfortunately the 2.6.37 patch does not work with the 3.1.8 kernel. Has anyone found a 3.1.8 compatible version of this patch?
Cheers, thanks in advance,
mtg
Last edited by mind_the_gap (2012-01-10 10:37:47)
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Did you make any progress in this past month mind_the_gap ? I'm having the exact same issue, and don't really know what to do now.
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Hi,
sorry for the delay.
Did you make any progress in this past month mind_the_gap ? I'm having the exact same issue, and don't really know what to do now.
I couldn't get it to work and so I left the Mac alone. Eventually, I just took a common PC and installed Arch. After 1h I had my system up and running (versus about four days in total of messing around with the Mac -- if I am sure at one thing it is that I never ever would be myself such a thing). Anyway, I wish you good luck and hope you find a solution. If you do: please let the forum know about it -- this would probably help some people :-).
Cheers,
mtg
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