New Install of Debian of PPC G4 not booting with repeated message "drive not ready.."

jeffpeck · 03-17-2010, 04:21 PM

I just installed Debian onto a PowerPC G4 Tower with two hard drives. I left OS X on one of the drives and reformatted and installed Debian on the other, using the installer from the 60Mb ISO from the Debian website.

The installation had no issues and it starts yaboot and Debian no problem. After about 2 minutes of the booting up process, it starts to output this, every five seconds:

hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
hda: drive not ready for command

While this happens, other things still continue load and it outputs occasional messages and even gets to "Debian Login:" where if you type really quickly and hit enter, it takes it and prompts for "Password:" right after the next round of the above messages.

I have not been able to completely log in yet.

I can start up into the shell as root with "Linux single" with no problems.

Can anybody please help with this? If I could guess, I think this might have something to do with the second Mac OS Formatted Hard drive. I have considered unplugging that drive and testing it that way, but I am looking for a solution to turn off whatever script is running that every five seconds and failing, regardless of what it is trying to do.

Thank you,
Jeff

Mr-Bisquit · 03-18-2010, 09:41 AM

On /etc/fstab, what's the layout?
Which drive is not ready? If it's the one which has the most trouble, then you should consider only using it for Apple,/boot, or swap and the reliable drive for /usr and /home.

gratefuldread21 · 03-18-2010, 09:56 AM

when i installed ubuntu on my ps3 it says no roofts found why

jeffpeck · 03-18-2010, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr-Bisquit

On /etc/fstab, what's the layout?
Which drive is not ready? If it's the one which has the most trouble, then you should consider only using it for Apple,/boot, or swap and the reliable drive for /usr and /home.

Thank you for getting back to me. I am not in front of the G4 right now to check /etc/fstab, but I can tell you that one drive is only for OS X and the other drive is only for Debian. Debian has no reason to do anything with Mac OS drive and if it is trying to do something with it, I would like to disable that. Is there a config file that would stop whatever process this is?

Mr-Bisquit · 03-18-2010, 05:38 PM

I'm guessing that hdc has the hfs(+) volume on it.
You'll either need to add the hfs toolset or to edit out with # on the fstab entry to prevent debian from trying to mount it.
The directory of /lib/modules/<release|use the active kernel architecture on your machine>/kernel/ look in fs for the module.

Mr-Bisquit · 03-18-2010, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gratefuldread21

when i installed ubuntu on my ps3 it says no roofts found why

Did you specify the following directories during install: /, /boot, and a swap space?
You may need to reinstall.

jeffpeck · 03-19-2010, 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr-Bisquit

I'm guessing that hdc has the hfs(+) volume on it.
You'll either need to add the hfs toolset or to edit out with # on the fstab entry to prevent debian from trying to mount it.
The directory of /lib/modules/<release|use the active kernel architecture on your machine>/kernel/ look in fs for the module.

Thank you for pointing me to that directory. All of the files that I have found in there are .ko files and are binaries. Where would I find a configuration file to comment out the line and what line should I look for?

Thank you for your help.

Mr-Bisquit · 03-23-2010, 08:58 PM

Sorry about the delay here.
The location for the mount points can be found in /etc/fstab

Code:

cat /etc/fstab

Example output from x86 laptop

Code:

cat /etc/fstab

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Tue Feb 16 23:30:53 2010
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
UUID=cc2665d8-a195-4600-99b1-f112402f5509 /                       ext4    defaults        1 1
UUID=44c40a93-36d8-4165-bebd-c33c5f2b5bf6 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0

Code:

/lib/modules/your_kernel-type/kernel/fs/hfs/hfs.ko
/lib/modules/your-current -kernel-type/kernel/fs/hfsplus/hfsplus.ko

You can find this with

Code:

$uname -a
#pay attention to the output and note the values of 2.x.kernelname#
locate hfs |grep modules
#Look at the ouput. This will tell you which modules to load#
su #or sudo if you have it installed#

As root

Code:

modprobe #use the proper filesystems from the cat /etc/fstab output#

Use the ubuntu powerpc live disk to correct.

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/relea...ve-powerpc.iso

I'll be connected in a week or two with a constant connection. If you are still having trouble, just pm me and I'll let you know when I can give you a live help session.
Again, sorry about the delay.