On Tue, 21 Jun 2016, Jeffrey Mark Siskind wrote: > http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/20160619_140357.jpg
Are you certain that there isn't a PERC H700 in this machine? [Sort of odd that mpt2sas is triggering a state error in your screenshot if there actually isn't one.] > I don't believe that I have any add-in cards. The machine was > purchased straight from Dell. It has six SATA disks and 4 gigabit > ethernet ports. It has four 12-core AMD CPUs and 128GB RAM. The output > of lspci on an indentical machin purchased at the same time that is > still running wheezy is enclosed below. OK. This: > 00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI > SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [IDE mode] makes me think that the SATA controller is in IDE/Legacy mode instead of AHCI. In theory, this shouldn't matter, but it's possible that this is also a problem. I'd try switching it in the bios and see what happens. > What does the kernel output while it is detecting the disks and > partitions? Remove the quiet option from the kernel command line by editing it in grub. > Do all of the drives show up properly? echo /dev/sd*; should give you an idea of what is there in the initramfs. > When the boot fails, can you read from the underlying block > devices? more /dev/sda; should work, I believe. > I don't know what one can do in at the initramfs command prompt. If you give > me some commands, I will try them out and post the output. > > Does specifying delay=20 or similar result in a successful boot? > I will try this. This should actually be rootdelay=20; sorry. > I will try to get this info. It will require me to redo the exercise > of a fresh jessie install from USB. I'll have to take and post screen > pictures because I have no way to capture the console output. I believe the R815 still has a serial port; you can just plug in a serial cable and append an appropriate serial tty option to the kernel command line to get output as text. > But again note, that I do not believe that there are any disk hardware > errors. And I do not believe that there are any data errors in the > layout of the ext3 file system, the layout of the md0 raid array, or > the partition tables. The reason is that after the failed jessie > install, I reinstall a fressh wheezy from USB. I don't repartition. > And I don't rebuild md1 and don't rebuild /aux. But I do rebuild md0 > and / as part of the fresh install. And it works. Yes; it's possible that a change in one of the drivers between the wheezy and jessie kernels is exposing a firmware bug (or there's a bug in the kernel itself) which is causing this issue. What I'm trying to do is get enough information so that the error is obvious. -- Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com What I can't stand is the feeling that my brain is leaving me for someone more interesting.