On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:01:51 +0100 Søren Boll Overgaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi, > > On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 03:55:20PM -0600, Jacob S wrote: > > > > The machine comes stock with a raid controller. I had to disable the > raid functionality for d-i to actually see any drives. Doing so > resulted in what the dell refers to as "sata/pata combination mode". I > have no idea if that is common terminology. So, to answer your > question, to the best of my knowledge no raid functionality is > currently enabled. Ok, this simply sounds like disabling raid. > > The dmesg excerpt you mention below does not convince me it sees the > > drives as pata instead of sata, as all 2.4 kernels assign hd* > > devices to sata drives, in my understanding. I also didn't see what > > kernel version you are running (assuming it's not 2.6.9, since you > > mention boot problems with that version). > > 2.4.27-1-386, the one installed by d-i. > The entire dmesg output is at http://e.wheel.dk/~boll/stuff/dmesg.gz > > > Also, if you really are using a 2.4 kernel during installation and > > then trying to boot the 2.6.9 kernel from unstable, that is probably > > the cause of your problem. 2.6 kernels label sata drives with a > > /dev/sd* device and 2.4 kernels use /dev/hd*. This will cause a > > sudden stop when it reads your /etc/fstab file and only sees > > references to /dev/hda which now looks like a non-existent device. > > That would probably explain it. However, I am not certain how to > change fstab in a way that will allow me to boot a 2.4 kernel, in case > booting a 2.6 series kernel fails. > I will fiddle with it though, to see if I can get it to work. Unfortunately I don't know of a way to be able to boot both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. If one fails and you need to boot the other, I would recommend a rescue disk to edit fstab. > > What does "hdparm /dev/hda" report? > > # hdparm /dev/hda > > /dev/hda: > multcount = 16 (on) > IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit) > unmaskirq = 0 (off) > using_dma = 0 (off) > keepsettings = 0 (off) > readonly = 0 (off) > readahead = 8 (on) > geometry = 19457/255/63, sectors = 160041885696, start = 0 You might try "hdparm -i /dev/hda" to see what it thinks your hard drive is capable of doing. man hdparm will help with how to change those settings. > > Using 2.6.7 kernel, it doesn't even > > tell me if udma is on or off and errors out similar to yours when I > > tell it to enable it. Nevertheless, hdparm -t /dev/sda and hdparm -T > > /dev/sda report pretty good speeds for me: > > > > # hdparm -t /dev/sda > > > > /dev/sda: > > Timing buffered disk reads: 158 MB in 3.08 seconds = 51.29 > > MB/sec > > > > # hdparm -T /dev/sda > > > > /dev/sda: > > Timing cached reads: 1024 MB in 2.00 seconds = 511.31 MB/sec > > # hdparm -T /dev/hda > > /dev/hda: > Timing cached reads: 4420 MB in 2.00 seconds = 2210.00 MB/sec > > # hdparm -t /dev/hda > > /dev/hda: > Timing buffered disk reads: 12 MB in 3.28 seconds = 3.66 MB/sec hmm... Your reads from cache on the hard drive are really fast, though the reads from disk obviously leave a bit to be desired. I would recommend trying a 2.6 kernel, as I'm told it's SATA support is a lot better. (I've not done a comparison myself, since I didn't want to have to fuss with changing fstab.) > > It won't make the difference between booting or not booting, but > > you'll probably get better performance from a kernel ending in one > > of the following instead of -386: > > Yeah I know, I just went with the 386 one to reduce the number of > things that could potentially go wrong, ie. 686 specific instructions. Ok, just so long as you know you're probably hurting cpu performance a bit. HTH, Jacob
