I have read what I could find about problems with SATA and reboot problems but none of the topics I found match my case.

I have a Pundit-R with a SATA-drive, the drive shows up as hdc (secondary primary) and I can not find any setting in the BIOS to change this.

Manual install (with edited config to get /cache and /myth on hdc3 and hdc4) seems to go fine, files are copied and it says installtion was successful. But on reboot the machine doesn't start. Booting from the CD again I can verify that files seems to have been copied to hdc1 as they should, hdc2 is autodetected as swap, so that part seems fine.

But as many others have reported there is no lilo.conf. I tried creating one and running lilo, byt lilo complains that it can not write /boot/map~ (read only file system). (It first also complained about writing the MBR backup file, but that could be redirected using the -s switch, but I can't find anything about how to prevent r redirect writing /boot/map~.)

I also tried to run lilo from chroot /dev/hdc1 but it complained about not being able to access the device (probably because something with /dev).

Any ideas before I go ahead and burn a Debian CD instead? (I'm a Debian user, but have always installed using floppies before, but since the Pundit has not floppy I'll have to use a CD for the first time.)

Did you remount /dev/hdc1 as rw?

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Remount? Why? The install process was able to copy all files, to me that suggest that the partition was mounted rw.

The problem is solved though, after reading up on how to run lilo chroot I suddenly found an /etc/lilo.conf on /dev/hdc1. Although there was one single error in it: it said "boot=/dev/hda1". Changing that to boot=/dev/hdc1, remounting /dev/hdc1 with "-o dev" and running "chroot /dev/hdc1 lilo -v" worked fine.

The questiong though is why it took so many attempts before I got a lilo.conf written. Obviously other people have had the same problem. I think there is some bug in the creation of lilo.conf.

I am having what I believe to be a related problem. Although my symptoms are slighty difference. I am not done trying stuff but I thought it was time to join in and get some help. Please keep in mind that while I can find my way around Linux a little bit, I am no Linux expert.

I too did a SATA manual install. Upon reboot I got to the point where the MBR should be executed and the machine just freezes. I went through and tried many things in the bios and tried removing hardware that was not required and still would not boot. So at this point I am thinking LILO did not init the MBR correctly. So I will have it redo that. So I boot into knoppmyth install and switch over to a clean screen and mount the HD.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/hdmount

Now I jump over to the hd and the etc folder and there is a lilo.conf. So I run lilo.

lilo -v -C ./lilo.conf

Mind you I have never had to lilo an MBR for a drive I did no boot from. So maybe I am already lost. LILO dumps an errror message.

part: invalid arguement .........or something like that.

Huh?
I open the config and the very first to lines are some thing like...

vga=791
part: /dev/sda1

Yes it would be nice I could post the actual file. But I don't know how to get it off the system. Right now no network connection (maybe I should remedy that), not that I would know what to do once it was plugged in. And of course no floppy. If nobody has any ideas on how to easily move the file then I will make a better effort to duplicate it by hand.

Anyway, I thought this was enough to get started. So I deleted the first 2 lines and ran lilo again. I barfed saying that sda was read only. So I change the conf to use sda1. Now it complaining that /boot/??? is read only. I assume this has something to do with the need to chroot. I will try to figure this out. but if somebody would post the exact commands I need to perform the lilo after booting from cd, that would be helpful.

_________________
GA-K8NS-939 Ultra
AMD 64 939 Venice 3200+
1GB RAM (2 512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM )
HD3000
2 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7s
MSI Nx6200ax-td128 video card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 - 350W PS
BenQ DW1640

Thanks,

Chris Lopeman

Seems to be a similar problem.

To run lilo you must chroot to the correct root, otherwise it will refer to the wrong kernel. So the command line must be like:

chroot /mnt/hdmount lilo -v

Meaning lilo will use /mnt/hdmount/etc/lilo.conf.

The errors about read only file system is because you did not chroot.

Note that you probably have to mount using "-o dev" switch, since otherwise /mnt/hdmount/dev will not work correct when you chroot.

mount -o dev /dev/sda1 /mnt/hdmount

And make sure that all references in /mnt/hdmount/etc/lilo.conf are to the correct drive.

The boot option should be /dev/sda (where you want lilo installed, MBR on the drive), root should be /dev/sda1.

First thanks for the details on how to use lilo with chroot. However I wanted to make one correction for any other newbies that make read this.


would not work until I forced it to use the chroot off the mounted harddrive instead of the booted knoppmyth CD.

Atfer that I was able to start to boot. Unfortuantly I then ran into the problem that others are having with SATA installations and booting.




I dont see any other errors but it flies by pretty fast so I could be missing something before this. I see no clear cure for this in other threads. But I will try somethings that are listed. If anybody know the best way to go here, please let me know.

I certainly appreciate everbody's help, but I think I should say that knoppmyth appears to be falling significantly short of its goal of making mythTV installable by anybody. I have never even had this much trouble installing linux to the point where it would at least boot. Again I appreciate the help and am willing to do some work here, but I am afraid that many will be turned away by initial issues like this.

_________________
GA-K8NS-939 Ultra
AMD 64 939 Venice 3200+
1GB RAM (2 512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM )
HD3000
2 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7s
MSI Nx6200ax-td128 video card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 - 350W PS
BenQ DW1640

Thanks,

Chris Lopeman

Hi,

I have only done a couple of sata installs so this may / may not be of value.

To start with, keep it simple. Use only one drive, as you can add it later. Sometimes if stuff is plugged into the usb it causes issues too, also bios settings can be a trouble area.

Basicly the steps I went through: (flaky memory so double check things please)
Choose manual install
chose configure (I think that is what it is called)
Select drive to partion (space bar, press enter)
Make a primary of ~ 3gig, type of 85, mark as bootable for mbr
Make primary of ~1 to 1.5 x memory, type of 83 I think for swap
Make primary of ~12gig, type of 82 for ext2
Make primary of remaining space, type of 85 for ext3
Write
Quit

go through the install, do not use mythtv as a user. Once it finishes, it should drop to a prompt. enter reboot
Remove cd and press enter, at boot press enter for 1024x768 or enter tv for 800x600 (your choice)

Once it comes up, right click on desktop and open an xterm, su - to root. follow the wiki notes at http://knoppmythwiki.org/?id=KnoppMythInstall to format sda 3 & 4.
do a mkswap /dev/sda2 then ( I think there is an -s in there)
do a swapon /dev/sda2

Now edit the /etc/fstab ( the following applies also for upgrades)
change /dev/sda3 /cache ext2 auto (rest stays the same)
change /dev/sda4 /myth ext3 auto (rest stays the same)

mkdir /cache
mkdir /cache/cache
chown mythtv:mythtv /cache
chown mythtv:mythtv /cache/*
chown mythtv:mythtv /myth
chown mythtv:mythtv /myth/*
mount /myth
mount /cache

At this point you should be able to login in on the waiting xterm for the finishing touches.

Please correct any entries caused by my memory flaws ..
Mike

The problem is when you do not get past this point, because it won't boot from the drive.

I was lycky enough that the Pundit-R puts the SATA drive as /dev/hdc, maybe the problems booting from SATA drives as /dev/sda is a problem not really related to what distribution you use but what boot loader you use? Maybe Grub does it better than lilo?

mlj, Will you confirm the partition types you are suggesting? They seem a bit out of the norm.

Here is a list of partition types to aid your confirmation:

82 Linux swap
83 Linux native partition - ext2, ext3, reiserfs, etc. all use ID 83. Some systems mistakenly assume that 83 must mean ext2.
85 Linux extended partition

I am gonna try your process letter for letter once confirmed.

_________________
GA-K8NS-939 Ultra
AMD 64 939 Venice 3200+
1GB RAM (2 512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM )
HD3000
2 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7s
MSI Nx6200ax-td128 video card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 - 350W PS
BenQ DW1640

Thanks,

Chris Lopeman

Good morning,

As I mentioned, I have only done a few serial installs however they all came up as sda. I assume that we could go up through drive "sdz" with enough money

Maybe the bios has a setting that affects the drive id or simulates an ide, don't know.

Sorry the information didn't help.
Mike

Something I noticed that's odd in my lilo.conf and I noticed it in another thread. At the bottom the other bootable partitions area contains sda2. In my install sda2 is the swap partition as I would expect it to be in most SATA and SCSI installs. I really dont expect to have other bootable configurations to start with. Of course I have tried removing this and the only effect it has is on the lilo menu. But it just seems to be another indicator that the lilo.conf that is being generated is really flakey.

Also mjl: Looked like we were posting at the same time. You may have missed my post. Please take a minute to answer my question.

_________________
GA-K8NS-939 Ultra
AMD 64 939 Venice 3200+
1GB RAM (2 512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM )
HD3000
2 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7s
MSI Nx6200ax-td128 video card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 - 350W PS
BenQ DW1640

Thanks,

Chris Lopeman

Hi Chris,
The hdc part has been nagging me all day and it makes me wonder if some motherboards maybe have an adapter built in that lets the bios think it is a regular IDE. I know they have them as second party items to go either way.

You should only have one partion as bootable which should be what ever you set as /

I was a bit dislexic on the 82 / 83 and have them reversed. 82 = swap and 83 = ext2 . I appologize but I did say I was working from a flaky memory

The hdc / lilo, there were some posts regarding the tricks for that and you probably have to adjust the /etc/fstab. Is the 85 is right or wrong for / & /myth? I can't say for sure however, if I run cfdisk on my system it reports the proper ext3 and so if it is happy who am I to argue. May be it is just a green wheel but It works.

If there is any else I run across, will definetly share it.
Mike

Good News...I can boot myth now. But what is probably more important is, how I did it.

Well I was not making any progress. I tried messing with the bios settings, like had worked for others. And removing unnecessary hardware and still I was stuck with -



I was gonna try the mkinitrd suggested in another post but it looked to be over my head.

So, I am about to give up and try it again from scratch with the a different HD and a partition map laid out in this post. But before I do that I thought I would try one stupid thing. I had done some reading before I purchased my motherboard and had read that the nvidia controllers are very well supported under Linux. So I bought a motherboard with the nForce3 Ultra chipset. I have a GA-K8NS-939 Ultra MB. This particular motherboard has 4 sata ports, 2 controlled by the nvidia chipset and 2 by a Sil 3512. I had been using the ports connected to the nvidia. So I thought I would switch to the other port just for the heck of it. I had seen another post that implied that the nvidia drivers were not getting load. Now remember, I have change nothing else. And I did not reinstall or do lilo or change the bios or anything. Just moved the cable from one port to the other leaving the same harddrive and it booted right up into KnoppMyth.

Now that is not to say that I do not have other issues. But I have gone through the setup at this point, connected to the Net, hit myth weather, copied a CD to the HD. Much left to fix and try, but at least it looks possible now.

So to me I ran into at least 2 serious install issues that I hope are fixed soon so that other newcomers are not quickly frustrated and scared off.

Thanks, I'll be back soon,

_________________
GA-K8NS-939 Ultra
AMD 64 939 Venice 3200+
1GB RAM (2 512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM )
HD3000
2 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7s
MSI Nx6200ax-td128 video card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 - 350W PS
BenQ DW1640

Thanks,

Chris Lopeman

I've never tride this as I've got no sata disks, but don't some mobo's allow for "native ide support" or some such setting? I understand that with this a sata controller looks to the computer just like an IDE and does not require special boot drivers.

_________________
MythRig: Shuttle SN41G2 + PVR-350->TV + KnoppMyth R5Beta7

I couldn't find any setting like this in my BOIS.

_________________
GA-K8NS-939 Ultra
AMD 64 939 Venice 3200+
1GB RAM (2 512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM )
HD3000
2 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7s
MSI Nx6200ax-td128 video card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 - 350W PS
BenQ DW1640

Thanks,

Chris Lopeman