Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

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sofatiger51
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Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by sofatiger51 » 2012/01/25 20:59:53

Hi All,

I have an Acer Travelmate 5612 laptop. It has dual boot Windows 7 and Hackingtosh 10.6.8 in the HDD inside computer. Through external USB connection and hard drive enclosure, I managed to installed Ubuntu 11.10. into second hard drive with 80Gb free space reserved for Centos 6.2. I tried to install Centos 6.2 into free space of hard drive, I saw disk reading error.

Correct reading should be: (Internal first HDD) Dual boot
/dev/sda1 (ntfs Windows 7)
/dev/sda2 (hfs+ Mac OSX)
(External USB 2nd HDD)
/dev/sdb1 (ext4 Ubuntu 11.10)
/dev/sdb2 ( free)

Through Centos 6.2 installer disk partitioning I have the following disk readings:
/dev/sda1 (ext 4 -Ubuntu)
/dev/sda2 (free space)
/dev sdb1 (ntfs Windows 7)
/dev/sdb2 (hfs+ Mac)

I have to abort the installation I am afraid that if I install Centos 6.2 into free space, I won't be able to boot Windows 7 and Mac OSx. Maybe with proper grub rescue, I may be able to boot Ubuntu. If Centos behaves like Ubuntu, it should pick up Ubuntu grub2 boot entry and allow me to select which Linux I elect to boot through boot menu.

I am new to Centos and Have no idea whether this is normal for Centos installation and disk partitioning. Any advice and explanation and how to do it would be highly appreciated. My USB drive connection is consider external hard drive. Mac and Linux can be installed to external hard drive and I assume Centos as well. Only Stupid Windows cannot be installed into external hard drive. Although the geniuses at Redmond said Windows 8 will be able to install to external hard drive.

Thanks :-D

pschaff
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Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by pschaff » 2012/01/25 23:03:52

Welcome to the CentOS fora. Please see the recommended reading for new users linked in my signature.

I would not characterize what you are seeing as an error. Different kernels sometimes detect the device ordering differently, and it may depend on how you have the BIOS options set. If the external disk is set to be the first boot device, then the order you are seeing is the one I would expect.

CentOS (following [url=http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General?highlight=%28TUV%29#head-d29a2b7e61ffc544973098f9dd49fe4663efba50]TUV[/url]) will not add a Ubuntu entry to GRUB and it still uses GRUB 1 and not GRUB 2, so your best bet is to use the advanced option when you get to the GRUB installation and write GRUB to the CentOS /boot partition, presumably /dev/sda1 in the setup shown. I'd recommend using /boot as ext4, and use LVM for / and swap. Your Windows and Hackintosh installations should not be impacted. After CentOS is installed boot Ubuntu and add a chainload stanza for CentOS to its GRUB menu. A forum search for "chainload grub ubuntu" will turn up some help on that.

sofatiger51
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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by sofatiger51 » 2012/01/26 12:33:35

[quote]
pschaff wrote:
Welcome to the CentOS fora. Please see the recommended reading for new users linked in my signature.

I would not characterize what you are seeing as an error. Different kernels sometimes detect the device ordering differently, and it may depend on how you have the BIOS options set. If the external disk is set to be the first boot device, then the order you are seeing is the one I would expect.

CentOS (following [url=http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General?highlight=%28TUV%29#head-d29a2b7e61ffc544973098f9dd49fe4663efba50]TUV[/url]) will not add a Ubuntu entry to GRUB and it still uses GRUB 1 and not GRUB 2, so your best bet is to use the advanced option when you get to the GRUB installation and write GRUB to the CentOS /boot partition, presumably /dev/sda1 in the setup shown. I'd recommend using /boot as ext4, and use LVM for / and swap. Your Windows and Hackintosh installations should not be impacted. After CentOS is installed boot Ubuntu and add a chainload stanza for CentOS to its GRUB menu. A forum search for "chainload grub ubuntu" will turn up some help on that.[/quote]

Phil,

Thanks for your reply. I will recheck my bios boot disk and boot priority set up. I appreciate your help and info on Centos grub and "chainload grub on Ubuntu". I definitely will follow your advice on installing Centos using advanced option for grub installation using ext 4 for/boot and LVM for / mount and swap.

FYI, I read new users link and also search for Centos forum through topic and also through Google search which yielded nothing . Then I post my question. :-D

Philip

addition: Boot disk priority set up shows internal hard drive as priority yet under Centos 6.2 installer disk partitioning, it shows external hard drive as /dev/sda.
FYI, external hard drive was not read by BIOS at all. Is it safe for me to install Centos?

pschaff
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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by pschaff » 2012/01/26 15:12:58

Please do not quote entire previous messages to no purpose. It just adds noise to the communications channel. If quoting is required for context, please trim.

The kernel may not see things the same way as the BIOS. Again, I see no problem installing CentOS in the unused space, as long as you are careful about not using any space already allocated to other operating systems, and do not allow CentOS GRUB to overwrite Ubuntu GRUB2 on the MBR.

sofatiger51
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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by sofatiger51 » 2012/01/28 21:19:35

Hi Phil,

Unable to install as error message stated unable to install because of a bug. As I am new to Centos, I try to save the log and file a bug report. Unfortunately, I could not do it as I needed guidance how to save log file and file bug report.
Could you help me? :-)

pschaff
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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by pschaff » 2012/01/29 00:05:44

Your best bet is to save the log file[s] to removable media, such as a USB memory stick. Change to the command prompt in virtual console 2 by use of [b]Ctrl-Alt-F2[/b]. Insert the media, do "fdisk -l" to find the device name, create a mountpoint, and mount. Assume the device is /dev/sdf1 - then something like the following should do it.[code]
mkdir /tmp/mnt
mount /dev/sdf1 /tmp/mnt
cd /mnt/sysimage/root
cp *.log /tmp/mnt
umount /tmp/mnt[/code]

sofatiger51
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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by sofatiger51 » 2012/01/29 17:34:35

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your instruction. I will file log of the bug error report later.
Meantime, Saturday night was kind of quiet here and I thought try to install Centos 6.2 to hard rive through replacing existing Linux (Ubuntu). I decided to do that because I messed up badly Ubuntu installation because of bad commands from Ubuntu forums. After the bad command, Ubuntu does not run smoothly at all. It acted like bloated Windows. Centos 6.2 reported following error trough text after writing changes to targeted installation disk.

[] ? do_invalid_op+0x7f/0x90
[] ? ext4_clear_journal_err+0xc4/0xc4/0xd0 [ext4]
[] ? check_preempt_wakeup+0x173/0x230
[] ? try_to_wake_up+0x9a/0x3b0
[] ? error_code+073/0x78
[] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x40
[] ? ext4_fill_super+0x1c2b/0x2970 [ext4]
[] ? get_device+0x10/0x20
[] ? scsi_device_get+0x43/0xc0
[] ? kobject_get+0xf/0x20
[] ? string+0x35/0xd0
[] ? snprintf+0x1b/0x20
[] ? disk_name+0x55/0xc0
[] ? get_sb_bdev+0x177/0x1c0
[] ? ext4_fill_super+0x0/0x2970 [ext4]
[] ? kstrdup+0x2d/0x60
[] ? ext4_get_sb+0x20/0x30 [ext4]
[] ? ext4_fill_super+0x40/0x2970 [ext4]
[] ? rfs_kern_mount+0x69/0x170
[] ? fet_fs_type+0x32/0xb0
[] ? do_kern_mount+0x3f/0xe0
[] ? strndup_user+0x45/0x80
[] ? sys_mount+ox6e/oxa0
[] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x28
panic occurred, switching back to text console

The following kernel error messages are preceded with Message from syslogd@livecd at diffenrent time few seconds apart

Message from syslogd@livecd at Jan 29 03:43:53
kernel:invalid opcode:0000[#1] smp
kernel: last sys file: /sys/devices/pci 0000:00/0000:00:1d7/usb1-1/speed
kernel: process mount (pid:3843, t=f43da00 task=f320030 task.ti=f43da000)
Kernel: stack
Kernel: call trace
kernel: code 32 02 e8 70 fd-ff ff 89 f0 e8 69 15 fs 8b 44 24 20 65 33 05 14 00 00 00 75 14 8b 5c 24 24 8b 74 24 28 8b 7c 24 2c 83 c4 30 c3 0b eb fe e8 33 ec c5 8d 76 00 53 89 c3 f6 40 30 01 75 36
kernel: EIP [] ext4_clear_journal_err+0xc4/0xd0 [ext4] SSi ESP 0068:f43dbda8
kernel: kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception

I hope above error codes/messages will provide you some insight into my installation problem. If I am allowed to guess, it may be something to do with the USB connection speed not fast for the Centos 6.2. The installer aborted the installation.

Thanks for your help. :lol:

pschaff
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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by pschaff » 2012/01/29 18:59:21

I'm unable to see anything definitive in the posted information. It appears you were trying to do an install from LiveCD/DVD. It is not clear where it the process the errors occurred. I'd try an install from DVD1 if the Live media appears to work, except for the install.

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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by TrevorH » 2012/01/29 19:07:29

Also, since the stack trace is full of stuff about ext4, I would either make sure to select to reformat all partitions during the install or, use rescue mode first to boot to a text console and manually run fsck -f against them all, one by one, to make sure that they are in fit condition to be used.

sofatiger51
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Re: Disk Reading Error - Centos 6.2

Post by sofatiger51 » 2012/01/29 22:21:38

Hi Phil,

Please advise how I can find your private email address so that I can email you full bug report. I try cut and paste and it is not going through to post.

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