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Old 02-25-2007, 11:24 PM   #1
kinoini
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Same problem Mandriva installs, just does not show as an operating system.


Hello. First post here, and I don't want to be a threadjacker, if I'm out of line, please direct me to the correct forum/thread. I am experimenting with linux. I tried freespire and found it to be an easy install, but limited hardware support. I thought I'd try Mandriva PowerPack 2007.

I installed Mandrivia PowerPack 2007 on a primary partition on my second drive that I created for it (40gig, formated reiserFS)answered the walthrough questions, and told it not to write to the MBR, but rather to the root directory of the drive. I use a bootmanager (Acronis Operating System Selector) to configure bootable os's. The installation worked well. It said reboot. I did, no Mandriva. My bootmanger does not see the partition as containing a bootable operating system.

I've tried repartitioning the drive with an NTFS as the first partition, reiserfs as the second, reversed that, or with only reiserfs, and several combinations in between. I've disabled the bootmanager, no luck.

I've booted to, and tried the rescue option. I asked it to reinstall the bootloader. It reports an error that the parition does not exist.

Details of the system
CPU: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Processor 4200+
Mobo: MSI MS-7185
Video card: is normally an nvidia 7950gx2, but I rma'd that, and am working temporaily with a 6600.
RAM: 2gig OCA, timed, tested with memtest86...and tested over time without an error.
Optical drives:HP DVD Writer 640c
TSST CD/DVDW SH-S162A
TSST CD/DVDW SH-S162A
SONY DVD RW DW-G-120A.
Wired ethernet is Nvidia onboard.
Wireless ethernet are Linksys WMP300n and WMP54G.
Hard disks: 1 - 500gig SATA, non-raid, primary active with winxp sp2
1 250gig SATA, non-raid, partitioned for additional operating systems. All paritions have been removed on the second drive, and I've tried several configurations with Mandriva, no success.
2 250gig SATA drives in raid 0 as a data repository.

I tried installation with raid detected (which is what the install process recommended) and without. If I install without raid detected, I receive an error that the parition could not be mounted, and installation abends.

So, at this point, I'm stumped. Mandriva documentation states: "If your computer is not already installed with Mandriva Linux you only need the installation media (DVD or CDs), very basic computer skills (of the "move pointer and click" kind), common sense and a few minutes."

That would seem to be a slightly inaccurate assessment.

I have put about 12 hours or so to make this work. Stil no luck.

Any ideas?
 
Old 02-26-2007, 05:12 AM   #2
reddazz
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I've moved your post to its on thread in the Mandriva forum, to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Is there any particular reason why you need to use Acronis. The Mandriva bootloader would have worked well for booting Windows, Linux and other OSes. Installing it to the MBR would have saved you all the hassle you are having at the moment.
 
Old 02-26-2007, 06:10 AM   #3
kinoini
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Thank you, I appreciate it.

I'm new to dual and multi booting, and found that acronis does a nice job. I wasn't sure how, or if the linux grub would continue to update itself when i add additional os testing. Will it? I'll be adding vista on a partition...though I've heard vista blows away any xp partition that might exist on the system. I'll have to look into that before I load it.

I think I found the problem last night. There are a few things causing mandriva to not boot, and/or from acronis seeing it as a bootable os. Using the freespire CD, I went into edit mode and altered the root location to hd2,0. Why did I use the freespire cd? Its the only way I knew how to get to the grub to make changes...you do what you know, you know? When I rebooted, acronis saw the install and added it.

So now I can get to the grub. But it still tries to start the os from hd1,0. It fails and says error. I figured out how to edit the grub and made changes so that it boots to hd2,0. My bios shows boot drive order as the 500gig, the 250gig, then the scsi raid 0. So i'm not sure why the 250 shows as hd2,0, but this seems to work.

However, the boot fails. When I try to boot, the mandriva splash opens, and then nothing seems to happen. Except that my usb keyboard goes black, and when I reboot I receive a no keyboard error during the post. I have to pull the power plug, and discharge the mobo for this to be fixed. When I watch the failsafe process, I see that the system halts after hitting a particular usb device. I take the chance and remove the external, powered kensington usb hub I have attached. One last try, with ps2 keyboard and mouse, and voila!! It boots into mandriva. It still requires me to edit the start up line, but I think I can fix that once I get in with a root account. And, after it passes through the initial setup, my usb mouse and key board lit up and start working too. But only if I boot to option 2, which is linux no fsb.

So that's where I'm at right now. I can only guess something is happening with the SATA and raid issues on my computer that causes mandriva to view the root as hd1,0 and not hd2,0. Oddly enough, when I had freespire on here, it set root at 1,0 and booted fine. So, I'm stumped.

As for the usb hub, and the usb mouse and keyboard, I have no idea what's up. The installation never saw these items as a problem. I saw some posts about usb peripherals and problems with booting. I'm going to re install with a ps2 keyboard and mouse, hopefully get it up and running, then make adjustments to include a usb keyboard and mouse. Someone posted that on a different board.
 
Old 02-26-2007, 05:46 PM   #4
Junior Hacker
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I use bootitng as a boot manager and multi-tool, works great also. By not using a boot manager and going with grub, there will be allot of editing in the grub configuration for every new installation which is not newbie friendly. There are some tutorials/examples and lots of support but usually takes more time using forum knowledge than it does to get to know your boot manager. My boot manager has some very distinct advantages to the traditional partitioning schemes and I'll never go back to the traditional way.
I had similar problems the other day when I installed Debian Etch 64 bit with my Dell USB keyboard and turned around and re-booted with a ps2 keyboard and all was well. Then for the hell of it, while it was running after a couple re-boots, I just switched back to the USB keyboard and everything was cool?????
It just had problems on the first boot, or maybe I just did not give it the half hour it needed to set it up?/?
I think your biggest problem is raid related, either you don't know how to use your boot manager to it's full potential yet (working with raid) or the raid setup is not quite right. I don't have raid so I can't help there.
But if your boot manager gives you what mine does, " over 200 primary partitions, re-size, slide, compressed imaging of partitions or volumes, installing as many of the same OS from the same image as you want on the same drive without editing dick squat, protecting systems from each other and their viruses, etc. etc. etc. I would stay with it if I were you.
Also, when you first built the partition, you have to make sure to activate it with your boot manager before loading the OS for it to see grub in the / partition, you probably did but just mentioning it as I tripped on that mistake in the past and installed the OS in the wrong partition, the one that was active.
One last thing I want to mention, because my boot manager only works with primary partitions, I can set it to have an OS only see four partitions per drive on up to 8 drives(MBR primary limitation), it looks to me like you are allowing the OS to see too many partitions or the wrong ones. It should only have access to it's root partition, /home, /swap and a Fat32 data partition. As a matter of fact, you can leave /home with / if you share a Fat32 data partition with all your other OS's to keep all your data in one place accessible by all, meaning you don't need to have a separate /home partition. The swap can be shared by all Linux installations.
 
Old 02-26-2007, 06:01 PM   #5
Junior Hacker
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Also, raid is handy for backup purposes or speed/performance, personally I rather just have a multi drive system for a multi-boot configuration. Because a 10GB root partition yields much better performance than the usual set up from off the shelf, one 250GB partition or whatever. So raid is not required for performance when using smaller partitions. Keep your data partition high and the OS's low on the drive also for better performance.
 
Old 02-27-2007, 12:46 PM   #6
kinoini
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Update, after much work, Mandriva is now running

I have to say, Mandriva is a beautiful operating system. It's easy on the eyes, and so far, has handled the hardware I've got without a problem.

Thanks for your response. I had the same issue with the USB keyboard. I used a ps2 for a few boots, and then plugged in the usb keyboard without a problem. Also had to remove my powered usb hub. Mandriva would halt at boot time with a usb error as well. I use the Acronis Disk Director suite because its straight forward and let's me manage partitions/drives/formating, splitting, and merging drives, as well as booting with multiple OSs. I'm sticking with it. It's a little finicky when it comes to identifying operating systems, and seemingly didn't see mandriva because the bootloader was incorrect. It did the same thing to me with winxp. boot.ini had a reference to winnt rather than windows. The machine booted up fine, but acronis didn't see it as an os until i corrected the WINNT entry. I believe my RAID array is set up correctly, and though it's small, there is a noticable slow down when the drives are not in RAID. I only broke up the primary raid 0 because I wanted to start experimenting with linux, and freespire didn't see the raid.

I think, as reddazz had mentioned, I would have had few (or no) problems if I did the standard Mandriva install, letting it take space from the windows partition, and writing to the mbr. I also think that if I had kept the two raid 0 arrays, I wouldn't have had a problem. But, in case anyone else comes across the same problems, this is how I resolved the Mandriva 2007 install on a SATA drive/partition, that is not the primary bootable, with one RAID 0 array:

The following is probably old hat for seasoned folk, but I'm just learning. I figured I'd pass this on if someone was in a similar bind.

I created 3 partitions for Mandriva (I really didn't know that I needed three). 1 "/" primary partition-ext3, 1 Linux swap partition, 1 "/usr" logical partition-ext3. I tried reiserFS, but when I did a test giving Mandriva a whole drive, it selected ext3....so I did, as well. Also, note, by default, Mandriva set up a 7 gig "/" drive. I chose to copy the install DVD to the partition during the installation. This took up most of the partition, and I could only install a bare bones version of Mandriva. There was plenty of room on the 250gig drive I gave Mandriva, so I'm not sure why the 7gig root partition, with a 200+ gig /usr partition. When trying to install Mandriva with its "use existing partitions" option, I could not, even with editing the grub, get the system to boot to linux.

I installed Mandriva, selected custom partitions, and showed it the 3 I'd made, establishing the mount points. This is a key point:During initial install, I was asked if I wanted to activate RAID bios software for each of the drives. At first I said no to the first 2, and yes for the raid 0. This did not work. The installer reported failure mounting and/or formatting the partitions on the non-raid drive. I can only guess its the way the sata controller on the k8n mobo handles the sata drives. The installation completed, and I told it to write the grub to the root directory, not the MBR.

After restarting, I checked, and no, Acronis did not see it as a bootable os. I did the same thing I mentioned before, booting to freespire. I checked and root was set to hd31. However, the mandriva install had written the grub with hd1,0. I re-ran the root and setup commands with (hd2,0). Reboot.

Acronis now sees the OS, and I can select it, but Mandriva won't run. Using the "e" option in the grub, I changed the hd1,0 to hd2,0, and it loaded Mandriva. You have no idea how great that felt after so many failed attempts. Once in Mandriva, I edited menu.lst.

I'm not sure why the hd1,0 didn't work. Freespire (in the same configuration, worked with 1,0). The drive is, in fact, the second drive and linux is on parition 1. The only thing I could think of is that my primary bootable drive is on SATA controller 1, my second standalone hd is on SATA controler 2. The RAID drives are on controller 3/4. So Mandriva correctly saw it as hard disk 2, partition 1. However, it shows within windows as drive 3. The bios has the boot order as harddrive 1(bootable windows), harddrive 2(where Mandriva lives), scsi-0 (the raid array) as drive 3. I'm stumped.

I also saw two files of interest in the /boot/grub directory. Device.map and install.sh. Device.map showed the drives and corresponding numbers 0, 1, 2, I mentioned above. If I were to edit these, would that make a difference if in re-run the grub install? I saw within install.sh that hd(1,0) was mentioned. So, is that just a log based on set up values, or does that drive the grub values?
 
Old 02-27-2007, 10:08 PM   #7
Junior Hacker
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Got me stumped there because I'm lost with raid and have not done any multi-booting with grub, never had to look at grub configuration because of my boot manager.
 
Old 02-28-2007, 11:15 AM   #8
kinoini
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Mandriva grub sets drives incorrectly on SATA RAID configuration.

I apprecate the input, and the help I've gotten by going through these forums. Much thanks. From my perspective, the problem is "resolved" with the workaround I've documented in my setup notes. I did a full installation again to test my walk through, and it only took about an hour. With a quick edit, mandriva booted up fine. Only the test of time now, will show if there are any bugs to work out. Still the oddball usb issue. Maybe Mandriva isn't quite right for this motherboard. I don't see it specifically listed in the HCL.

Anyway, again, thanks.
 
  


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