Slackware 13.1 x86_64 install hangs while booting huge.s

disturbed1 · 08-14-2010, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bitznarf

My system is an old AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 4400+ with a ASUS A8N-SLI premium MB, 2 nVidia 7800 GTs in SLI mode, and 4 GB of ram. I have 7 HDs installed, 2 of which are in a hardware raid array (though I don't imagine that the HDs have anything to do with the problem).

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

Temporarily unplug the HDs from the SI 3114R SATA controller. I suspect this is a problem with one of your chipsets. Perhaps even go as far as disabling the chipset in the BIOS. Is your board AHCI compliant? If so, double check those settings in the BIOS as well. And of course check for an update while your at it

The latest BIOS version for your board is version 1303 (2007/07/13)

I had an Nforce board that also uses 3 different chipsets. 1 for PATA/IDE, 1 for 2 SATA ports, and yet another different chipset for an additional 4 SATA ports. The nv_SATA chipset performed just fine. The additional SATA ports were not functional. Deleyed starts, file corruption, drive would disappear .... I don't recall the exact silicon image chipset I had, but there are known incompatibilities with some models and Linux, and some models with certain HD manufacturers (Seagate for example). Before that I had two older Nforce 3 250gb boards, which had the exact same issues with the SATA ports. Personally, I'll never purchase another Nforce board, not when Intel ICH's and AMD's chipsets work flawlessly.

bitznarf · 08-15-2010, 07:36 PM

I removed all the hardware in my system other than 1 HDD (connected to the nVidia SATA controller), 1 DVD drive, 1 USB keyboard, 1 usb mouse, 1 nVidia 7800 GT and 1 monitor. I was able to boot huge.s without any problems. I then started adding hardware back into the system until I ran into problems. Adding all the HDDs back in (4 on the nVidia controller, 3 on the silicon controller - 2 of them in a raid array), the second DVD drive, the sound card, using the USB hub in the monitor for my keyboard and mouse all had no problems. When I added the second video card back in, I got a black screen after the boot prompt. When I changed the SLI setting in my BIOS from 'auto' to 'single video card' I was able to boot with no problems. I honestly don't understand why any of that would change anything, as I had tried the 'single video card' option prior to doing anything with my hardware. At the end of the day, when I ran the setup program, the hardware was exactly the same as it was at the start of the thread.

I setup the one HDD I'm using for linux with:

Code:

swap - 4 GB
/boot - 60 MB
/ - the rest

I then ran setup and did a full install, letting the installer auto configure lilo, installing to the MBR of my first hard drive (the raid array on the silicon SATA controller, has Windows XP installed on it). When I try to use the 'Linux' option from the boot menu I get the following:

Code:

VFS: Cannot open root device "823" or unknown-block(8,35)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions:
<partition list>
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,35)
Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.33.4 #3
Call Trace:
<lots of annoying things to type that I can if it will help>

I will take a look at what was auto configured in my lilo.conf file when I get more time.

edit: re: bios etc: years ago when I first installed on this system I had no end of problems using the nv_SATA ports for my raid array, using the silicon chipset I've had no problems.