Mandriva

[viking60]

Wait a minute! That update applet is glowing so I will try a GUI update first. Lots of choices where I just picked no. 1 on all of them.... It seems to clean up some dependencies now.....
It wanted to remove a lot of Xfce files - I can live with that..... I have to admit that it must be hard to upgrade a system with Gnome KDE and Xfce like I have....
--- Still updating and looking good.....
And I ended up with a several pages long list to fix. Same thing as with urpmi it just toke longer.
Rebooting......
Fresh install it is
....
That installer is realy easy and intuitive. It finds all the partitions and sugests to use the ones that are alreaddy there. It also sugests to Format / and leave /home as is. So basically I just have to press next.....

Some lousy English in the animations while installing like:

Sphere: Our tech support became closer to you

Correct me if I am wrong, but that sounds like a description of an already given support (no biggie).....
And finished (that was fast!). Rebooting.......
And now it is time to pick the language. Norwegian is suggested and the computer is frozen

Turned out it was just a really long wait..... moving on

[viking60]

Finished and that went well. It is just that I do not have the time to reinstall all that software so I will restore my backup now.

[rolf]

Yesterday, I had some time and booted a boot.iso for 2011, did the ftp installation. There was a partition where I had tried beta3, last, it was about 250G, so I just made that /, nothing fancy. I've seen the installer many times. I wanted to install grub to the MBR of the / partition, as this was just a trial. When I rebooted, I made a chainloader entry in 2010.2 grub menu.lst and rebooted to that. For many years, I've had 5 or 6 hard drives on my machine. The installer always gets them mixed up. I can see, when I call the grub shell just after BIOS hands off to the primary bootloader, the way grub enumerates the drives is different from how it sees them when running from the installer or booted OS. The partition number is the same, the drive number is different, e.g. (hd3,1) just after BIOS is (hd0,1) for grub when the OS or installer is booted. Using the grub find command from the primary bootloader splash screen, I can edit the grub commands and boot the grub in the 2011 / partition MBR. Then, I find the installer has it wrong there, too. So, lather, rinse, repeat: edit the kernel and initrd command lines for that and away we go!

Unfortunately, the kernel, the system, idk where, wasn't able to load the right disk drivers, maybe, / does not get mounted. Dropped to a dracut # shell, no mounted /. Dracut is, for one thing, the new mkinitrd, mkinitrd-dracut in update-alternatives. From 2010.2, I tried re-making the initrd in a chroot to 2011, it completed, a much smaller file, and did no better, maybe worse, when trying to boot. When I have a little time, I might file a bug.

[viking60]

It looks like there will be a Powerpack 2011 not to be released any later than the 15th of November.
http://forum.mandriva.com/en/viewtopic. ... 74#p851574
I am not sure who is making the announcement though.

[rolf]

Code: Select all

[rolf@localhost ~]$ rpm -q rpm
rpm-5.3.12-0.20110712.2-mdv2011.0.x86_64

This time, I have about 250G where I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to clean-install 2011 and I thought of a new strategy

1. Do a fresh ftp install of 2010 Spring to this one partition, using the boot.iso
2. Make sure packages are up-to-date but it seems the install has done that, already.
3. Get the "beta" script I have seen reported, here and elsewhere, from the Mandriva Wiki.
4. Switch to runlevel 3.
5. Execute that script. It went quite smoothly, downloading about 1690 packages from the .ru server at a shaped-bandwith 1496 Mb/s, "bursting" to 2.4Gb/s on this new Comcast cable connection. Toward the end, it appeared the script changed to the quick rsync://carroll.cac.psu.edu USA server to check for other files, and that is my urpmi source, now.
6. Reboot to 2011.

I will get used to this for a while, try to upgrade to systemd, according to the issues on the wiki upgrade page, see about bringing all my /home and data partitions over to 2011. I'm a little concerned about the kde config files in ~, so I think I will take some time to make sure the sandbox installation is stable.

[viking60]

Are all your problems here Grub related? All of this because you could not place it in / of the partition ?

[rolf]

With the live disks and ftp installation of 2011, the repeated factor seems to be one of my disks was not recognized: sda. Like a driver/controller issue. I could always get the kernel and initrd loaded, so not a problem of finding those.

ERROR: pdc: zero sectors on /dev/sda

I saw that many, many times, winding up at a dracut# prompt, / not mounted, unable to mount partitions that I could see under /dev/ sdb, sdc, sdd, sde disks and partitions were there; could not mount them. I googled, checked what modules are loaded, changed the sata storage mode in BIOS, nothing helped. I saw one post with a vaguely related problem that was solved by changing the sata cable to a different controller but I did the latest strategy before trying that.

Code: Select all

[root@localhost rolf]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ebbb3

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          63  1157884874   578942406   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2      1157933070  1465144064   153605497+   5  Extended
/dev/sdb5      1157949135  1362745754   102398310   83  Linux
/dev/sdb6      1362745818  1465144064    51199123+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0ae60ae5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *          63    58315949    29157943+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdd2        58315950  1953520064   947602057+   5  Extended
/dev/sdd5        58316013    60356204     1020096   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdd6        60356268   110928824    25286278+  83  Linux
/dev/sdd7       110928888  1953520064   921295588+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x11bb4cc0

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *          63      433754      216846    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc2          433755  1953520064   976543155    5  Extended
/dev/sdc5          433818     9638999     4602591   83  Linux
/dev/sdc6         9639063  1953520064   971940501   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    42411599    21205768+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2        42411726   565070309   261329292   83  Linux
/dev/sda3       565070310   958100534   196515112+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4       958100535   976768064     9333765    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       958100598   974663549     8281476   83  Linux
/dev/sda6       974663613   976768064     1052226   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Just checking, I see one of my disks is still missing, so my problem is not, really, solved.

[rolf]

I've moved the missing (in other than 2010.2) disk off the "Drive Xpert" 2-port controller to the last open port of the six "normal" connections. Now, it is online and operational in my sandbox 2011 installation. Don't know why the 2-port controller is ok in 2010.2, not in the other examples. Also, this is just a data drive with one partition, so I can't see that it would 'confuse' a 2011 fresh install so much that it won't boot. However, I will test the live disks to see if they are happier with this set up.

Not surprisingly, a Knoppix 6 livecd and older Puppy 4.1.2 both see that disk, now. Enough berserksysadmin for one day.

[viking60]

Yes that is strange. One disk with one partition should be nothing to get confused about - I think But you are way into Guru land here.... I have nothing to suggest which is frustrating - as it is to get stuck like that. My Vanilla VB installations went well but there the "Hardware" is different of course.

[dedanna1029]

How do I unsubscribe from the MDV mailing list? I have emails from them but no unsubscribe link on them. Thanks.

[viking60]

I dunno I have never subscribed so I never got them.I hate automated mails including ML's. But it is tolerable when you can unsubscribe so there must be a way on the page you did that?

[viking60]

@rolf here is what barry has to say about this:

From: Barry Jackson
To: Viking60

Hi,
This sounds very similar to an issue I have with my current motherboard.
If I use the on-board sata controllers which are nvidia nforce3, then grub can only see the first partition on the the hard drive.
It is the same with grub2 (which I now use as the master boot loader, as it can handle just labels, which removes the problems of drives and partitions switching assignments).
My solution was to fit a Silicon Image PCI sata card and disable the on-board nforce3 controllers.
I have seen the same problem on two motherboards that use the nforce3 chipset.
It will be interesting to see if that is what rolfe is using.

Say hello to rolfe for me - he got me interested in grub in the first place

Cheers,
Barry

I have offered him the position of Grub Berserk but he is a shy and modest guy - so we will see if he registers. He is my grub guru.