System hangs on boot - "Mounting root file system" fails with Via VT6410 enabled

Eagleorn · 06-19-2006, 11:25 AM

Hi everybody!

I have just installed Ubuntu 6.06 on a desktop machine and it works fine, but i cannot use all my IDE disks.

I have one of my disks connected to Via VT6410 IDE/RAID chipset. The disk was recognized during installation, but now I cannot make it work. It's a pure data disk, with a huge partition with NTFS as file system. The NTFS support works, I can access other partitions with NTFS. I only want IDE support in the controller, no need for RAID. I can toggle the functionality of the controller in BIOS (IDE|RAID|Disabled)

When trying to boot into ubuntu the system hangs on "mounting root file system" and drops me to busybox, complaining about that hda3 does not exist (hda3 is where the root partition resides). If I disable VIA IDE RAID support in BIOS, everything works fine, but I want to use this controller as IDE (not RAID).

When I look in /dev there are normally (when VIA vt6410 is fully diabled disabled) the following disks:

hda
hda1
hda2
hda3
hda4
hda5
hda6
hda7
hdb

But when I enable the chip (IDE functionality only) I find the following disks via busybox:

hde
hde1
hde2
hde3
hde4
hde5
hde6
hde7
hdf

looks like the device names and/or mounting points become messed up.

My current fstab looks like:

Code:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/hda3       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/hda2       /boot           ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/hda6       /home           ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/hda1       /media/hda1     ntfs    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/hdd1       /media/hdd1     ntfs    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/hdd2       /media/hdd2     ntfs    defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/hda5       /usr            ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/hda7       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/hdb        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0

I don't know where 'hdd' comes from, I just have one disk connected right know, and it is hda, but during installation, my data disk was connected to the IDE controller ...

menu.lst

Code:

title		Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.16-ck12
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/vmlinuz-2.6.16-ck12 root=/dev/hda3 ro quiet splash
initrd		/initrd.img-2.6.16-ck12
savedefault
boot

title		Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.16-ck12 (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/vmlinuz-2.6.16-ck12 root=/dev/hda3 ro single
initrd		/initrd.img-2.6.16-ck12
boot

title		Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-25-amd64-generic
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/vmlinuz-2.6.15-25-amd64-generic root=/dev/hda3 ro quiet splash
initrd		/initrd.img-2.6.15-25-amd64-generic
savedefault
boot

title		Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-25-amd64-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/vmlinuz-2.6.15-25-amd64-generic root=/dev/hda3 ro single
initrd		/initrd.img-2.6.15-25-amd64-generic
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title		Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title		Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root		(hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

I found this patch: robertk.com/source/
but it says:

Quote:

The functionality of this patch is already included in the main linux kernel versions 2.6.15-rc2 and later.

Is it some kernel option that's misconfigured?

Please could anyone help me and explain what I must do?

Eagleorn · 06-20-2006, 03:00 PM

Nobody who has encountered this problem, or have at leats has a hint that might help me find a solution.

I have an Intel Pentium D with EM64T, therefore I have a 64-bit system, could that have something to do with it?

I have searched this forum for threads describing smiliar problems, and I found out that support for VIA VT6410 should be included in kernel 2.6.15-1, but, as I said, I have kernel 2.6.16

I might be wrong out, maybe it isn't the controller itself, but rather something in my configuration?

cabe · 09-20-2006, 12:29 AM

I am having this problem as well now. Ever find a solution to it?

Eagleorn · 09-21-2006, 12:58 PM

After much research i finally found a bug report, (can't remember the url ...)
Anyway, that bugreport described almost the problem I had, but there was no solution at that time, but the bug was reported

So, Well, I can't say I found a solution, I would rather call it a workaround:
From my first post It's not hard to work out that hda became hde and that hdb became hdf when VIA vt6410 IDE functionality was enabled

I therefore edited my fstab (/etc/fstab) and replaced all "hda" with "hde" and so on
I also did the same with menu.lst (/boot/grub/menu.lst)

That did the job, and the system works fine!

Hope it will work for you too!