Mandriva 2007 sunna

[AussieJohn]

Being a bit of a dill and a sucker for punishment, I went back on an earlier post in which I said Mona was a dead loss and I wouldn't bother with Sunna.

Thanks to my ISP (Telstra Bigpond ADSL) giving a free download within hours of it being released, I downloaded it and burnt it.

 

To fill everyone in on the present status.

My Maniboard is an ASUS A7V600-X. I have 2 off WD 160Gb SATA-II 16mb cache Hard Drives. No IDE HDDs, only two DVD optical devices both running as Master on each of the two IDEs channels. I am currently running Mandriva2006-Official (ext3) with ALL Updates on Sata 1. Sata 2 is a mirror of Sata 1 but is not presently running in raid mode.

My intention is to try to install and run 2007 on Sata 2.

 

The DVD-rom is detected. I select INSTALLATION, then the Language choice comes, OK, then the License Acceptance, OK, then a message...............Installing driver for hard drive controller VIA Technologies INC (VT6420 SATA RAID Controller) This seems to take about 2 or 3 minutes. A heck of a long time anyway.Then a quick message about installing a USB driver.

Then finally.........

ERROR

An error has occurred.

An error has occurred no valid devices were found on which to create new file systems. Please check your hardware for the cause of the problem.

 

I even tried the selection.... Installation with ACPI disabled...... but that would not even start.

 

Now keep in mind that I did not have this problem initially, in that I ONCE, and once only was able to go through the install procedure but it would not reboot past a certain point in the reboot while it disabled a number of IRQs for what ever reasons.

When I tried to use the 2.6.17 kernel in Mandriva2006-Official I had this same reboot problem until I removed that kernel and things were normal again. Now I cannot even get to do an install and it does not even offer this very hard drive from which I am presently using. To me this indicates that contrary to the error message, the HDDs are NOT the problem.

 

I have carefully checked my settings in the bios but cannot see anything out of place so it seems to be back to this 2.6.17 kernel again, or at least Mandrivas version of it.

 

Has any one got some suggestions they can contribute???. Hopefully people who are trying it with SATA drives and maybe even have the same type of mainboard.

I fear the official 2007 version is not going to be any better when it is released soon.

 

Cheers. John.

 

 

[moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

[arctic]

Maybe you ran into this rather long-standing bug in the core system (opened in 2005, still valid). It has been marked as a severe bug. Read about it here:

http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=18699

and here

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=176249

 

One thing you could try is to change the SATA Function mode in the BIOS from Compatible to Enhanced. Maybe that gets your installer working.

 

You might also try to boot your install with the "noauto" option, it will disable PCMCIA probe (F1 at CD splash, then type "alt0 noauto"), then hit ALT+F4 immediately in order to see if there are some kernel messages in the terminal visible that give us more of a hint what might be colliding there.

 

I also stumbled upon this patch while googling. (Beware: White text on black background!)

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=git-commit...8824744&w=2

 

Good luck, John. :)

[jboy]

I'm wondering if the problem is specific to SATA2?

 

I have a motherboard with the VIA KT600 chipset and it has two internal SATA drives and an external eSATA drive connected to an add-on eSATA PCI card. I've been able to run everything with no problems from LE2005 to 2007 RC2 (as well as other linux distros) on the internal drives and 2007 RC2 (with cooker updates) on the external drive (Mandriva 2006 did not recognize the external drive).

 

However, all three drives are SATA/150, not SATA2 or SATA/300. (the external drive is actually SATA/300 but the controller is only SATA/150 so I jumpered the drive for SATA/150 compatibility).

Edited September 22, 2006 by jboy

[Gowator]

I'm wondering if the problem is specific to SATA2?

 

I have a motherboard with the VIA KT600 chipset and it has two internal SATA drives and an external eSATA drive connected to an add-on eSATA PCI card. I've been able to run everything with no problems from LE2005 to 2007 RC2 (as well as other linux distros) on the internal drives and 2007 RC2 (with cooker updates) on the external drive (Mandriva 2006 did not recognize the external drive).

 

However, all three drives are SATA/150, not SATA2 or SATA/300. (the external drive is actually SATA/300 but the controller is only SATA/150 so I jumpered the drive for SATA/150 compatibility).

 

John, if this works you might be able to switch it back later..... with the proper kernel not the installer one...hopefully the SATA would be OK if its not the installer kernel.....

 

Also how about sticking an old IDE drive in for the install and once its installed check with the SATA and if it then works you can move the install across? You can use partimage etc. to do this....

[AussieJohn]

Thanks Arctic. There is no SATA Function mode in the bios unfortunately. I tried typing in various things in to the boot line in the install menu but any additions or changes resulted in the install process ceasing.

 

Thanks Jboy Thankfully I was originally aware of the 150 aspect and had the links set for that from the beginning.

 

Thanks Gowater. I am posting this response from 2007. Before seeing your suggestion I decided to try just that and am on an old 8Gb hdd. It was a hell of a job to get here because the darned thing would not install grub on a floppy for me so I had to do a dummy upgrade to the install and try to install on to the mbr of this hdd. Still finished up having to go the failsafe route to init 3 and then to startx or kde. Hell what a mess.

To get here I really had to disable SATA in the bios. I was curious and only really wanted to see what all the new 2007 will look like.

Frankly for all the problems involved to get to this point I have to admit to being not overly fussed with what I see. There is NOTHING that really grabs me and says wow but there is certainly nothing I really dislike either. Sure things look different but to me it doesn't mean much since I set up appearence to suit myself from all the various packages available. I am looking forward more to the updates of the various applications which I know will be faster, more stable and more flexible.

 

What truly disappoints me is that 2006 handled my hardware perfectly from the beginning and yet here is the new Ra Ra version that can't seem to handle anything properly. If I had the very latest hardware available then I could understand but not 12 to 18 month old Technology. One of the things that 2007 did do right was test the setting the lcd screen correctly whereas 2006 never did, I always had to correct the final settings after rebooting from the install because the test during install always caused a screen screwup.

 

The 3D thing apparently won't install on my machine so I cannot experience that. I don't know if this means I will need to do a video card upgrade. If it does then I think I can do without it for a fair while.

 

I will play around with it a little bit more and then abandon it. I am not prepared to spend too much more time with it.

 

If anyone has further suggestions I will certainly look at them.

 

Cheers and thanks. John.

[scarecrow]

Also how about sticking an old IDE drive in for the install and once its installed check with the SATA and if it then works you can move the install across? You can use partimage etc. to do this....

I agree- this is an old, and reliable method... after all, almost everybody has an old, small IDE drive in reserve.

After finishing the installation (grub as bootloader strongly recommended) you must cp your installation to the SATA drive, remove the installation HD, and then use the boot CD to chroot to the copied files (you can also use a liveCD), and perform

grub-install /dev/sda

(it will take quite some time probably, but it will work in the end).

Of course you must also change the fstab entries and replace /dev/hdax with /dev/sdax or similar- you get the point, I guess.

Edited September 22, 2006 by scarecrow

[AussieJohn]

Thanks scarecrow. The Method I can follow. but I think you will agree it is tedious and time consuming.

I may give it a try but it all still boils down to being a work around rather than an actual solution or explanation of the problem.

Cheers. John.

[Gowator]

Thanks Arctic. There is no SATA Function mode in the bios unfortunately. I tried typing in various things in to the boot line in the install menu but any additions or changes resulted in the install process ceasing.

 

Thanks Jboy Thankfully I was originally aware of the 150 aspect and had the links set for that from the beginning.

 

Thanks Gowater. I am posting this response from 2007. Before seeing your suggestion I decided to try just that and am on an old 8Gb hdd. It was a hell of a job to get here because the darned thing would not install grub on a floppy for me so I had to do a dummy upgrade to the install and try to install on to the mbr of this hdd. Still finished up having to go the failsafe route to init 3 and then to startx or kde. Hell what a mess.

To get here I really had to disable SATA in the bios. I was curious and only really wanted to see what all the new 2007 will look like.

Frankly for all the problems involved to get to this point I have to admit to being not overly fussed with what I see. There is NOTHING that really grabs me and says wow but there is certainly nothing I really dislike either. Sure things look different but to me it doesn't mean much since I set up appearence to suit myself from all the various packages available. I am looking forward more to the updates of the various applications which I know will be faster, more stable and more flexible.

 

What truly disappoints me is that 2006 handled my hardware perfectly from the beginning and yet here is the new Ra Ra version that can't seem to handle anything properly. If I had the very latest hardware available then I could understand but not 12 to 18 month old Technology. One of the things that 2007 did do right was test the setting the lcd screen correctly whereas 2006 never did, I always had to correct the final settings after rebooting from the install because the test during install always caused a screen screwup.

 

The 3D thing apparently won't install on my machine so I cannot experience that. I don't know if this means I will need to do a video card upgrade. If it does then I think I can do without it for a fair while.

 

I will play around with it a little bit more and then abandon it. I am not prepared to spend too much more time with it.

 

If anyone has further suggestions I will certainly look at them.

 

Cheers and thanks. John.

 

 

LOL.. sounds reminicent of 10.0 and 10.1

 

I'm starting to think you might be more than ready for a rolling distro?

 

Frankly for all the problems involved to get to this point I have to admit to being not overly fussed with what I see. There is NOTHING that really grabs me and says wow but there is certainly nothing I really dislike either. Sure things look different but to me it doesn't mean much since I set up appearence to suit myself from all the various packages available. I am looking forward more to the updates of the various applications which I know will be faster, more stable and more flexible.

 

I can really sympathise..... this is how I felt in 10.0 .... it was just such a let down !!!

I may give it a try but it all still boils down to being a work around rather than an actual solution or explanation of the problem.

I think the explanation is the limitations of the installation kernel and need to keep the kernel small enough.... I know it doesn't solve it but ????

[AussieJohn]

Here is a follow up.

 

This morning I was just killing time and decided to have a detailed look at the Sunna DVD. Much to my surprise I discovered that the good and stable kernel 2.6.12-25 was on the DVD as well as the new 2.6.17.

It seems that perhaps the kernel 2.6.17 is not the problem after all but what Mandriva has done elsewhere. The more I think about it now, the kernel has no influence until the packages install takes place much later on after the desired kernel is selected.

I didn't notice the existance of the 2.6.12-25 because I used the preselected packages floppy I have made so I did not scan through the packages list during the install at the time.

When I was trying to use the sunna, when I put it on an old ide HDD, I found that in the post settings part of the install, that it wanted to set up the onboard sound as well as the pci card sound. This was weird because the on board sound has always been disabled in the bios and none of 10.0 or 10.1 or 2005 or 2006 made any attempt to set it up or even mentioned its existance.

I think this is another symptom of Mandriva screwup.

I haven't had a chance to check it out but during the install of 2006, I don't remember it pausing after the license acceptance part and "installing a driver for hard drive controller VIA Technologies INC (VT6420 SATA RAID Controller)" and spending 2 to 3 minutes doing it.

It would not surprise me that this is what is causing the problem resulting in the "ERROR...No valid devices were found on which to create new file systems. Please check your hardware for the cause of the problem."

Perhaps it is trying to set up a raid when one is not wanted or something ?? I don't know.

 

Cheers. John.

[Gowator]

John, I obviously didn't explain this well....

 

What I meant is that DURING install a special cut down kernel is used which is not the one which is installed.

 

I can't remember details on different releases but the kernel used is usually specially for the bootable CD.... using syslinux or isolinux kernels.. so even though the actual version number of that kernel might be 2.6.x.y-mdk its not the same as 2.6.x.y-mdk... it has a lot of things taken out...

 

The old installs were I think syslinux so the kernel had to be <1.4MB.and not gzipped... then newer ones are not limited to 1.4MB but they are still restricted compared to the final working version....

[AussieJohn]

Thanks Gowater for taking the time to explain further, I now get the gist of what you are talking about. So it is this "cutdown" kernel that seems to be the problem then. I guess this means that Mandriva have screwed up badly because they would be the ones to produce the cutdown wouldn't they ???.

I sure hope they get it right in the official release. People are not going to be as forgiving this time round since they have set themselves 12 months to get things set correctly whereas they used to have only 6 months in the past. If they blow this then sad to say I think Mandriva will be finished for good.

 

Cheers. John.

[Gowator]

Thanks Gowater for taking the time to explain further, I now get the gist of what you are talking about. So it is this "cutdown" kernel that seems to be the problem then. I guess this means that Mandriva have screwed up badly because they would be the ones to produce the cutdown wouldn't they ???.

I sure hope they get it right in the official release. People are not going to be as forgiving this time round since they have set themselves 12 months to get things set correctly whereas they used to have only 6 months in the past. If they blow this then sad to say I think Mandriva will be finished for good.

 

Cheers. John.

 

Well "exotic hardware" is always the bane of the installer kernels....unfortunately exotic means something slightly different over a 12 month development period!

I guess this means that Mandriva have screwed up badly because they would be the ones to produce the cutdown wouldn't they ???.

I dunno... its a 6 of one and half a dozen arguament if you ask me.

 

On one hand they have the real kernel people will be using 99% of the time and the install kernel that hopefully you only use once and balance all that out with simplicity of install procedure? The install kernel needs to be "fixed/frozen" to a certain extent.. because its written into iso's and .....

 

Obviously the first thing any noobie see's is the install kernel.... and as you know I think that something mandriva does spectacularly badly is marketing.

 

So my take is mandriva don't like making new CD's.....it doesn't fit their business model and so rather than put stuff in that might cause probs and not be able to be changed they err on the side of leaving stuff out????

 

The answer is IMVHO that they should get over the idea that they can't change an ISO once its made....but I don't think that fits their core philosophy.