Hi ho Gentoo-ers,
Why can't I boot??? Why can't I boot... Why? I do not even get as
far as a grub message.
I've just now installed Gentoo 2005.0 for the second time on a
brand new Pundit-R machine. (ATI chipset, Celeron-D 533 FSB, 256MB)
Both times the install went absolutely fine and both times the machine
came up lame with the following AMI BIOS/boot messages:
Auto-Detecting Primary Master..IDE Hard disk
Auto-Detecting Primary Slave..ATAPI CD-ROM
Pri Master: IBM-DPTA-371360 P74IA30A
Ultra-DMA Mode 4, S.M.A.R.T capable and status OK
Pri.Slave: TOSHIBA CDW/DVD SD-R1612 TB02
Ultra-DMA Mode 2
Auto-Detecting USB Mass Storage Devices
00 USB mass storage devices found and configured
Primary Master Hard Disk Error
Press F1 to resume
I've never used an AMI BIOS before. What's it complaining about? It
sees the drive but says the drive has an error? What's that mean
exactly?
If I press F1, reboot using the 2005.0 install CD then the machine
hangs, so I did the install using:
gentoo-nofb ide=nodma
If I reboot the same way I can eventually ssh in:
The drive is there:
livecd root # fdisk -l /dev/hda
Disk /dev/hda: 13.5 GB, 13578485760 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 26310 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 98 49360+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 99 1091 500472 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3 1092 26310 12710376 83 Linux
livecd root #
Since this machine is intended to be a MythTV frontend only I didn't
much care about hard drive performance so I used an old drive I had
here to save some money. (I only need 5GB or so for this machine and
you cannot buy anything smaller than 40-80GB these days so I'm using
an old 13GB drive that was in a machine we trashed 6 months ago.) The
machine is intended to be on all the time and mythfrontend seems to
make very little usage of the hard drive once the app is up and
running.
The partitions mount fine while using the LiveCD. The boot partition
is marked bootable and the OS is there:
livecd root # df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 95176 5300 89876 6% /
/newroot/dev/cdroms/cdrom0
695762 695762 0 100% /mnt/cdrom
/dev/loop/0 53248 53248 0 100% /mnt/livecd
tmpfs 95176 1128 94048 2% /lib/firmware
/dev/hda3 12510864 1379912 10495436 12% /mnt/gentoo
/dev/hda1 47584 2764 42352 7% /mnt/gentoo/boot
livecd root #
Here's some drive info:
livecd root # hdparm -i /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Model=IBM-DPTA-371360, FwRev=P74IA30A, SerialNo=JHYJHH30826
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=34
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=1961kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
CurCHS=65535/1/63, CurSects=4128705, LBA=yes, LBAsects=26520480
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-4 T13 1153D revision 17: 1 2 3 4
* signifies the current active mode
livecd root #
So the big questions are:
1) What exactly is this AMI BIOS message telling me?
2) Is it possible that an older drive might not be supported by the
IDE controllers in the ATI chipset? (I.e. - can the chipset simply not
talk to the drive?)
I tried disconnecting the CDRW/DVD completely to see if it was a
conflict between the two EIDE devices but go the same failure. the
drive is seen but does not boot.
Anyway, I'm hopeful that someone might have some first hand
knowledge what this message is really telling me is wrong. I have one
other old hard drive that I could try but that's a couple of hours of
work I'd rather not go through if there's a simple fix to this. (Like
some BIOS setting, etc.)
Thanks in advance,
Mark
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