[gentoo-server] trouble with booting 2005.0 on SATA RAID

[gentoo-server] trouble with booting 2005.0 on SATA RAID

[Paul Kölle]

Hi folks,

maybe someone hit the same roadblock an could give some insight.

The situation:
I'm trying to setup gentoo 2005.0 on a new p4 with 2Gig and 4 SATA
disks. The disks are on an Adaptec 8110x which uses (unsupported)
Marvell chips. So far so bad.

I managed to find a (proprietary) driver and built it on another gentoo
box, my plan was to boot the box, then load the driver manually to setup
disks, install the system and build a new kernel with the driver
included. The problem is, regardless what I put on the bootprompt, it
ends up with:

"Scanning for volume groups..."
 ....takes forever

"Activating volume groups..."
....hangs mostly...

The simple truth is: There are no volume groups, there are no block
devices at this point and I don't want the installer to bother at all.
How can I do this?

thanks
 Paul

BTW: I did my homework, I ordered another board but after the submission
the shop asked if it would be OK to ship an "equivalent" one since the
original was not in stock. Well...

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Re: [gentoo-server] trouble with booting 2005.0 on SATA RAID

[Chris S]

Paul Kölle wrote:

>Hi folks,
>
>maybe someone hit the same roadblock an could give some insight.
>
>The situation:
>I'm trying to setup gentoo 2005.0 on a new p4 with 2Gig and 4 SATA
>disks. The disks are on an Adaptec 8110x which uses (unsupported)
>Marvell chips. So far so bad.
>
>I managed to find a (proprietary) driver and built it on another gentoo
>box, my plan was to boot the box, then load the driver manually to setup
>disks, install the system and build a new kernel with the driver
>included. The problem is, regardless what I put on the bootprompt, it
>ends up with:
>
>"Scanning for volume groups..."
> ....takes forever
>
>"Activating volume groups..."
>....hangs mostly...
>
>The simple truth is: There are no volume groups, there are no block
>devices at this point and I don't want the installer to bother at all.
>How can I do this?
>  
>
I assume you are using genkernel to build your initrd?
Perhaps you can try telling it NOT to include lvm? actually specifying 
to NOT include lvm isn't possible, but rather than:
genkernel --menuconfig all you could try just the initrd on itself with:
genkernel initrd (include "--dmraid" if you are using lsr).
alternately, try bypassing the initrd (assuming all required sata 
drivers are statically compiled into the kernel).

-c

>thanks
> Paul
>
>BTW: I did my homework, I ordered another board but after the submission
>the shop asked if it would be OK to ship an "equivalent" one since the
>original was not in stock. Well...
>
>  
>
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Re: [gentoo-server] trouble with booting 2005.0 on SATA RAID

[Paul Kölle]

Chris S wrote:
>> The simple truth is: There are no volume groups, there are no block
>> devices at this point and I don't want the installer to bother at all.
>> How can I do this?
>>  
>>
> I assume you are using genkernel to build your initrd?
> Perhaps you can try telling it NOT to include lvm? actually specifying
> to NOT include lvm isn't possible, but rather than:
> genkernel --menuconfig all you could try just the initrd on itself with:
> genkernel initrd (include "--dmraid" if you are using lsr).
> alternately, try bypassing the initrd (assuming all required sata
> drivers are statically compiled into the kernel).
> 

Thanks, there is an undocumented switch "nolvm2" to turn off volume
group scan. Got it all working now. I'm not yet building the final
kernel. Is there a way to build an initrd with genkernel (and I'd need
to integrate a module wich is outside the kernel tree)?

cheers
 Paul
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Re: [gentoo-server] trouble with booting 2005.0 on SATA RAID

[Chris S]

Paul Kölle wrote:

>Thanks, there is an undocumented switch "nolvm2" to turn off volume
>group scan. Got it all working now. I'm not yet building the final
>kernel. Is there a way to build an initrd with genkernel (and I'd need
>to integrate a module wich is outside the kernel tree)?
>
>cheers
> Paul
>  
>
hmm that is a good question.. I don't use genkernel myself, so I can't 
say for sure. Certainly you can use genkernel to create an initrd 
(genkernel initrd). In terms of external modules, this is something I've 
never done before. Perhaps genkernel will build everything under 
/lib/modules? You'd need to test this theory ;) /etc/genkernel.conf 
doesn't offer much advice re modules.

man genkernel shows:

 --maxkernpackage=<tbz2>
              File  to  output  a  .tar.bz2'd  kernel,  initrd,  
contents   of
              /lib/modules/ and the kernel config"

perhaps this will help you?

-c
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[gentoo-server] trouble with booting 2005.0 on SATA RAID

[Paul Kölle]

replying to myself:

Looking at the gentoo forum helps sometimes, I got over the lvm issue
with the (undocumented) nolvm2 boot option. Now it hangs trying to mount
the CD to /newroot/cdroms/bla ... ;(

running-out-of-ideas-ly yours
 Paul
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