Install = OK, Boot = OK, Login root = Loops forever (mandrake 9.1)

[ColumbiaDiver]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help me with this one as it is totally bizarre.

Ok here the deal. I’ve been trying to install Linux on a HP Netserver LH Pro with 6 18gig Seagate drive, Pentium Pro with 2 200mhz processors, 512MB and an HP NetRaid 1 RAID card and a Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM video card.

I created a Raid Array with the following configuration:

7 logical drives, Raid 5. First drive is 7gig, remaining 6 drives are roughly 11gig each

I tried Red Hat and no go it gets partway through the install and just dies. At work we have a Netserver Lx Pro (quad Pentium Pro) and we were unable to install Red Hat, but it took Mandrake. So to make a longer story shorter I downloaded the ISO’s for Mandrake 9.1 to see if it would work, (I did all the checksum verification on the ISO’s and it came up ok), created the CD’s and started the installation.

The system started the installation, located devices, including the Raid card which it identified as a MegaRaid card. This is correct according to everything I’ve been reading on the forums. Went all the way through the installation, (I installed a lot of packages), configured the video, etc with no issues. Following the instructions I removed the CD from the drive and clicked on re-boot. The system went through the load process just fine, came up and asked me what I wanted to boot, ie Linux-secure, Linux-SMP etc. I selected Linux-SMP, system took me to a login prompt I logged in as root and a box popped up telling me it was completing the configuration. The box remained on the screen for a few minutes and then went away with a clock and a red background screen, (mouse still worked). All six of the drives were showing heavy activity, they were just being hammered. This continued for three hours with no sign of completing the login process and I finally shut the system off for fear that it was going to overheat the drives.

Has anybody ever seen this before or have any suggestions? At this point the only idea I have is to wipe the install and start over as I can’t even get logged in to trouble shoot the issue. Also, I took all the defaults in the installation including let it configure the partitions, (except adding packages)as this was just an initial test load.

Any help, ideas etc would be greatly appreciated as I am at a total loss.

Regards,

Gordon Owens

 

[silicontundra]

Hi Gordon,

Why are you using 7 logical drives with RAID-5??

Sounds to me you are making a RAID array inappropriately. Maybe you need to study up on RAID ;-)

IBM Server website had good stuff in it.

---------

As described on your other post on ...Dreaming, I have 6 drives RAID-5 as one logical drive and then another 6 drives RAID-5 as another logical drive.

12 physical drives make 2 logical drives of RAID-5

Win2K Pro WS and RH Linux 9 installed no problem in each drive. Have dual boot enabled.

Regards, Phil

 

[ColumbiaDiver]

Phil,

Thanks for the info. I created the first logicial drive as 7 gig because I may want to install WIN2K in a dual boot situation once I get everything working correctly with Linux and HP's website states that the Win2K will not install under the NetRaid card with a partition greater than 8 gig. As far as the rest of the configuration goes your right, I am new to raid and was under the impression that more smaller logical drives would be faster and less cumbersome than one 7 gig LD and one 66 gig LD.

If that's not the case I am more than willing to learn the error of my ways. ;-) I have two primary goals in mind, data integrity being first with performance running a close second.

Regards,

Gordon

 

[silicontundra]

Hi Gordon,

Thought so, check out raid.com , see cool Flash on raid.edu tab ;-)

In trying to have a partially used drive for the RAID-5, when you configure it, it will make all the others smaller too (at least with my IBM ServRAID I controller), thus wasting space.

Probably best to reconfigure:

Logical drive 0: 5 drives 18GB Seagate RAID-5 Linux
Logical drive 1: 1 drive 18GB Seagate nonRAID Win 2K

You may have to use one of the motherboard's SCSI-3 port for Logical drive 1. Never tried nonRAID on a RAID controller.

Or if you want, maybe partition all 6 drives into 1 big and 1 small for Win2K and have RAID-5 for both OSs and have the best reliability overall. You may want to test the rebuilding a dual partitioned failed drive before committing to this ;-)

Regards, Phil