0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

mandos · 2007-01-16 21:29:04

alpha3-base didn't create a "kernel26.img"
so my system doesn't boot

i don't think I made any mistakes, but I'm re-running setup now and I'll report in 15 minutes again

REPORT: I re-installed base-alpha3
hwdetect created a kernel26.img file this time
don't know what might have gone wrong! the only that is different from the first setup is that I didn't add the el_GR locales

anyway... now it mounts the system-disc as a read-only disc!
I hope its just me being tired and that these mistakes don't occure to you

redge · 2007-01-16 23:25:32

I was able to do an ide-legacy install of Alpha 3 base without difficulty. Did not have the problems that mandos ran into. There are some nice ideas in the install dialogue.

Lastebil · 2007-01-16 23:26:18

I've had some difficulties with the Voodoo ISO's and a brand new install on a machine with VIA hardware. In short -
First attempt was with a 7.2 installation CD, went fine but had severe issues booting. This makes sense, as the scripts for building the initial cpio file were different.
So, tried the 8.0 alpha 2 - no good (: That's been established.

However, the alpha 3 is exhibiting similar problems - it does NOT load the modules for IDE support in 'legacy ide' mode. I have modprobed them manually myself to set up the remainder of the install.

An improvement over the alpha 2 - the installation of packages DOES take place, with no errors. (Obviously this is a major step forward in having a working system (: )

I was able to follow through with the rest of the install, create a kernel, initial cpio, and install grub. Unfortunately, this doens't produce a bootable system - the same woes I had with the VIA chipset for my IDE controller seemingly not being loaded. I will twiddle with boot settings and try some further configuration fixes, but my experience with the alpha 3 is that it does not leave my new system in a usable state.

(Short version: It's a much NICER cd for intallation than 7.2, but it has some critical bugs at this juncture on my hardware.)

tpowa · 2007-01-17 07:23:47

which module isn't loaded?
the correct option is ide-legacy for enabling the old subsystem

Xilon · 2007-01-17 10:26:56

I just installed Arch Linux yesterday and it went quite well. Overall the installer is nice but I did get a bit confused at the stage where partition mount points were chosen. When choosing to mount say /dev/sda3 to /home, the installer later says that it's mounting it to /mnt/home. I understand now that it was only being mounted there for the install and later does become simply /home, but it was confusing. Another thing that felt a bit off in the process was that the installer asks you to mount swap, then root, and only later whatever you want. Usually installers have a list and you can choose where to mount each partition. It was ok, but just felt a bit odd.

I think those were the only peculiarities
Arch Linux is really nice btw.

quad3d@work · 2007-01-17 16:23:18

I had some issues with alpha2 built yesterday. Weird enough that lspci displaying linkage my NIC to VGA device. I forgot the exact message since I put Ubuntu back on (my work computer; job needs)... something like...

VGA compatible device: Broadcom NetXtreme BCMXXXX (vesa)

So X borked out rendering system freeze. I will try alpha3 built and post results.

[EDIT]
Now lspci displays correct values but X still hardlocks system when using fglrx so it's a different issue.

During installation it failed to generate kernel26.img due to HOOKS "input". I changed "input" to "usbinput" and regenerated kernel26.img, worked.

Lastebil · 2007-01-17 19:38:25

Tpowa: none of the modules required for recognizing the ide drives; that is, the via82cxxx module, the ide_core module, nor the ide_generic module.

Yes, the 'correct' method would seem to be the ide-legacy system, but both exhibit the same behavior on my system; i.e. neither load any ide legacy drivers. Thus, it is not 'correct' at all (:

Following the install, I've now found that the cpio archive that was created is MISSING the via82cxxx module. This is undoubtably why it can't find my drives upon boot - the driver required isn't in the initrd. Again, I did nothing extra - I simply chose the options as suggested, letting the system run the autoconfiguration scripts in order to detect the hardware, and create the cpio file.

Now, I'm guessing here, but it looks to me like something may be just missing detection of the VIA hardware in the module probing, and that may not be able to be detected at this juncture by an automagic means.

I believe this is fully relative to the VIA chipset itself, and can run additional tests if neccesary to determine what the heck is going on. Actually, I just asked on the irc channel if there were any logs, and it occours to me that perhaps if I grabbed the dmesg output, and everything in /var/log, this might help. I'll tarball that all up, and put it somewhere for you to view if helpful.

aritec · 2007-01-17 21:49:09

How can I mount the initrd.img?

I tried 'mount -t ramfs -o loop initrd.img initrdedit' and
'mount -t tmpfs -o loop initrd.img initrdedit'

Mounting worked, but without any files under initrdedit.

regards
Armin

Lastebil · 2007-01-18 06:48:20

What I did to look inside my initcpio thingage:

1. mounted the /boot partition (I'm one of the separate /boot people)
2. used 'file' to identify what it was - gzipped cpio archive
3. piped the output of 'cat /boot/kernel26.img' thru gzip -d and cpio -it to get a listing
cat /boot/kernel26.img | gzip -d | cpio -it | less

cr7 · 2007-01-18 15:16:54

mandos wrote:

alpha3-base didn't create a "kernel26.img"

Here too

There is an error when it's creating the image, with "input" hook...
No problem with fallback image.

tpowa · 2007-01-18 19:16:05

cr7 i think i know where the error is, i'll fix it the weekend, problem is in hwdetect.

gradgrind · 2007-01-18 20:34:51

Lastebil wrote:

What I did to look inside my initcpio thingage:
1. mounted the /boot partition (I'm one of the separate /boot people)
2. used 'file' to identify what it was - gzipped cpio archive
3. piped the output of 'cat /boot/kernel26.img' thru gzip -d and cpio -it to get a listing
cat /boot/kernel26.img | gzip -d | cpio -it | less

You know, you can copy the .img somewhere, renaming it to something.cpio.gz, and mc can open it just like a tar.gz file - you can inspect the contents really easily.

mandos · 2007-01-19 06:33:07

i'm away from the pc for 2-3 days now
I'll try 0.8a3 again tonight propably, this time I'll be able to spend more time with it hopefully

please tell me something, I'm I supposed to use ide-legacy?
(on a p4 with ide discs)
when is one supposed to use ide legacy?

cya later today

mwc · 2007-01-20 12:37:13

I had to reinstall Thursday night thanks to an HD crash. Installed from ftp-0.8, worked perfectly. Now back on Arch after a week on an Ubuntu LiveCD while my new HD was shipped in. Thanks for the great work on 0.8!

waltm · 2007-01-20 17:54:45

Just a brief bit of feedback.

Installed just fine using the defaults on a motherboard with the ATI RS480 chipset.

Did add "noapic" to the grub line after seeing apic errors in dmesg output post install.

USB DVD burner works perfectly etc.

Thanks for your work

Lastebil · 2007-01-20 20:37:23

Attempted another install on a thinkpad laptop. Unlike the other system with the VIA chipset, this went very smoothly; all network cards were found (as this machine has had an odd problem with the internal nic, I put a tulip based pcmcia card in to be sure) - and the drive was found, etc.

I'm sure the issue with the other machine is that the current kernel does NOT like the hardware configuration - as it's not working with the latest knoppix DVD, either.

redge · 2007-01-21 08:19:20

I did another install of .08 Alpha 3 base today and found that Select Packages is not necessarily in charge. Install Packages installed a number of packages that had been deselected. For example, Nano and Lilo were deselected from base, but got installed anyway.

Now this was a particular situation. I have a spare computer that I've been playing with. I had Gentoo and Slackware on it, with a shared /boot and /home but separate /, and I ran into this while replacing Slackware with Arch.

Perhaps someone else, doing a straight install, could confirm whether or not Install Packages is acting like it has a mind of its own.

nDray · 2007-01-21 16:20:16

Never noticed about unselected packages to be installed, but I have the same problem others are facing:
The creation ok a kernel26.img... It fails, and then a fall-back image is created, and I have to use it to boot.....

Another problem occurs booting from the new system... If there's any media in the optical drive, the boot gets in an infinite loop......

Everything else worked as it should, at least that's what it looked like....

About that kernel problem (it happens everytime I install), i'd like to know if, when updating to the next kernel, a valid kernel26.img will be created.........

tpowa · 2007-01-21 17:06:30

easy solution for now is to select usb booting on alpha3
or correct input in mkinitcpio.conf to usbinput.
new isos will be fixed soon

nDray · 2007-01-21 17:40:14

Which issue will that solve?

The kernel26.img or the loop when booting?

Acid7711 · 2007-01-21 17:41:01

Just wanted to say while my first laptop install flopped and refused to work at all, on my GF's HP Pavilion ze4900 install went flawlessly.

Btw, I do like the changes now that I've successfully used the new cd

nDray · 2007-01-21 18:02:15

The usb option solves the kernel img creation....

Couldn't find any unselected package with the package list option......

desertViking · 2007-01-22 00:49:45

Edit 1:

Couple of problems so far. I did a base install. My Ethernet card was not or was incorrectly detected. After base installation, ifconfig only shows the lo device. ETH0 should be there I think.

I thought maybe it had something to do with the kernel image that was created, so I tried booting to the fallback image. It had difficulty with one of my partitions (scary because it was my reliable boot partition) and dropped down to maintenance mode. It said that HDA3 was not a valid partition.

This was also weird because I'm not booting with the legacy IDE system.

So far, it seems to need some polish. I'll see if I can forage ahead.

Edit 2:

I went back and reinstalled from the CD, and asked it to add the network group. I took out a few things from the group that I didn't want, and it installed the rest. Upon rebooting, ETH0 was available.

I could have sworn that I had installed the base system before, and basic network was enabled, but perhaps not. I haven't tried the fallback image again, but I will.

braver · 2007-01-22 03:19:15

Did alpha3 install, on the GRUB install stage it hangs forever. I've already had GRUB in MBR. When I copied stuff manually to my own /boot partition, noticed that kernel26.img was not created, only kernel26-fallback.img. Where do I get kernel26.img now?

desertViking · 2007-01-22 04:46:30

braver wrote:

Did alpha3 install, on the GRUB install stage it hangs forever. I've already had GRUB in MBR. When I copied stuff manually to my own /boot partition, noticed that kernel26.img was not created, only kernel26-fallback.img. Where do I get kernel26.img now?

There's a bug that you can work around. It's counter intuitive, but if you say that you want to be able to boot from a USB device, the kernel26 image will be created.
From tpowa above:

easy solution for now is to select usb booting on alpha3
or correct input in mkinitcpio.conf to usbinput.
new isos will be fixed soon

Arch Linux

#176 2007-01-16 21:29:04

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#177 2007-01-16 23:25:32

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#178 2007-01-16 23:26:18

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#179 2007-01-17 07:23:47

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#180 2007-01-17 10:26:56

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#181 2007-01-17 16:23:18

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#182 2007-01-17 19:38:25

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#183 2007-01-17 21:49:09

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#184 2007-01-18 06:48:20

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#185 2007-01-18 15:16:54

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#186 2007-01-18 19:16:05

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#187 2007-01-18 20:34:51

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#188 2007-01-19 06:33:07

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#189 2007-01-20 12:37:13

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#190 2007-01-20 17:54:45

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#191 2007-01-20 20:37:23

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#192 2007-01-21 08:19:20

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#193 2007-01-21 16:20:16

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#194 2007-01-21 17:06:30

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#195 2007-01-21 17:40:14

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#196 2007-01-21 17:41:01

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#197 2007-01-21 18:02:15

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#198 2007-01-22 00:49:45

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#199 2007-01-22 03:19:15

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

#200 2007-01-22 04:46:30

Re: 0.8 alpha/beta and final Voodoo installation feedback

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