Grub problem? OpenSuse 11.0 on S5000XVN dual Xeon Quadricore

[malcolmlewis]

Originally Posted by plage

caf4926:

Under AHCI, only with the option edd=off the installation starts. Does
it install GRUB? I set it to install in the MBR of the first HD, but I
do not know if it has actually been installed and in which HD.

I have found out that the option edd=off implies that the linux will
not try to guess the HD order from the BIOS. So there is no point in
searching BIOS HD order.

No other linux distribution seems to start installation (or boot live)
with this BIOS using AHCI.

By the way, the system after installation is fully operational as long
as you do not reboot. As I said, I will give this machine another try
when I have time. If anyone has some hints of how to install GRUB by
hand and/or in all disks at the same time, I would appreciate.

Hi
I'm not sure if this may be relevant,but what I found with my SLED
system was the SATA controller screen printing was reversed to how
linux read the drives when multiple disks are used. So in my case,
sda=sata connector 4 sdb=sata connector 2. I wanted to use the separate
controller chips for redundancy, I have my home drives on the RAID
controller as JBOD with software RAID.

Can you physically check serial numbers versus controller positions
then use the one in sda position to boot from in the BIOS.

--
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.2-default
up 1:08, 1 user, load average: 1.59, 0.60, 0.25
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

[caf4926]

Common problems switching to AHCI under Linux

• AHCI controller does not work on AMD/ATI RS400-200 and RS480 HBA when MSI is enabled due to a hardware error. In order for AHCI to work users must provide the "pci=nomsi" kernel boot parameter. With MSI disabled in this way, the PCIe bus can only act as a faster PCI bus with hotplug capabilities. This is also true of the Nvidia nForce 560 chipset.[citation needed]
• AHCI controller on AMD/ATI SB600 HBA can't do 64-bit DMA transfers. 64-bit addressing is optional in AHCI 1.1 and the chip claims it can do them, but in reality it can't, so it is disabled. After that it will be forced to do 32-bit DMA transfers. Thus DMA transfers will occur in the lower 4 GiB region of the memory, and bounce buffers must be used sometimes if there is more than 4 GiB of RAM.[6]
• The VIA VT8251 South bridge suffers the same fate but it can be circumvented with the "pci=nomsi" option to force detection of the chip. This has been tested to work on 2.6.26, 2.6.24 and 2.6.20 kernels.

The reason it does not work after you re-boot is: "you don't have grub in the right place or you don't have the right HD set as 1st boot in BIOS"

My laptop was set as AHCI by default. When I first got it, I wiped the HD and planned to install XP, but XP could not install under that BIOS setting, so I changed it to 'compatability' - and it was fine. Incidentally, Suse did not mind either way what setting it was.

If you are sure you know which HD you set grub to - Great. Just make sure it is set first in BIOS. If what you said is true:

I have found out that the option edd=off implies that the linux will not try to guess the HD order from the BIOS. So there is no point in searching BIOS HD order.

it implies that what appears to be a kernel option is applied before grub. (I'm not sure how that can be)


Earlier you said

I changed it to the compatibility mode (PATA/SATA) and I could install with edd active and everything went smooth. The only problem is that only 4 HDs are recognized by the BIOS and linux. So I lost the usage of 2 HDs.

So did it boot from Grub?
Consider working on 'compatability' if it did/does work.
As I have only ever had 3 HD's at one time - I'm unsure of the implications of your 6

[plage]

caf4926:

I have not tried "pci=nomsi"under installation, although the motherboard is different from those where the problem has appeared before.

The option "edd=off" is for enable installation from the OpenSuse 11.0 DVD when AHCI is enable. If you do not put that, you get a black screen n the beginning of installation. If you put this option, the installation starts and it seems to work fine, but if a try a reboot, the machine cannot boot. There are two possibilities:
- GRUB was not installed. How do I verify its installation?
- GRUB is installed, but in a HD that is not the one Linux, using the "edd=off" option, is guessing to be the boot HD. How can I map under Linux the HDs, maybe by serial number, as malcolmlewis suggested? If the correct HD can be identified, it would be possible to re-install GRUB by hand in this HD. How do I do that?

Presently, the machine was switched to compatability mode and OpenSuse 11 is installed on 4 HDs. Linux boots with GRUB.

Do I need the 6 HDs? Yes, I bought this machine with 6 HDs because I do need a lot of space and some redundancy. If I can use the 6 HDs, I will install / in 4 HDS, with /home as RAID5 and / as RAID1 with a spare and the other two will be used as RAID0 (/scratch) to speed up IO during computations with heavy IO overhead. Therefore, The solution with 4 HDs is unning, but it is not enough for this machine.

[tnakir]

Hey...

I had a similar problem, I tried to install Windows XP SP2 (i know i am on the wrong forum but this could help) on the same motherboard.

I have 5 SATA HDD and 1 SATA DVD-RW and 2 PATA DVD-RW.

I was googling on this problem and i saw your post.

If you haven't installed it yet (as you wished, 6 separate HDD-s) this could help you.

You need to intall the OS over the Intel Deployment Assistant (CD you got with your MB, or you DL it from intel Web, it's a bootable CD with some stuff)

The thing is, it helped me, i see all the drives. Hope it helps you.

Good Luck!