Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install and more.

[Larry Linder]

Removed 5 th disk and tried a LVM install and it did not see disk 2, 3, 4 and 
you could not find if they were mounted or ? -  nothing.

Decided to go back to orig. hand lay out and when you get it done it says that 
sda must have a GPT disk Label.   There are no provisions to do this and its 
not done automatically in any scheme we can find.
The scheme the guys used months ago does not work of allowing it to create 
disk label and then bail out.
Ounce you try to use the LVM there is no way to get back to square 1.

This is really getting DUMB.   Right next to this box is a another box with 
6.2 loaded and using a manual partitioning scheme that has worked for us 
forever.   We never tried to use LVM on this system. 

How do you not allow a user to install the system any way he may need it.
The failure to allow the fifth disk to be installed is pretty bad. 

The last try will be an install with a new mother board and new disks and then 
we quit fooling around.

My only complaint is that how do a bunch of kids take a nice operating system 
and totally louse it up. 

Larry Linder

On Friday October 9 2015 12:14 pm, Larry Linder wrote:
> On Thursday October 8 2015 1:03 pm, Lamar Owen wrote:
> > On 10/07/2015 04:10 PM, Larry Linder wrote:
> > > It appears that at least from our experiments SL cannot handle more
> > > than 4 hard disks and this goes back to at least 5.9.   SL 6.7
> > > identifies the disks as all sda - sde but fails to mount 5th disk.
> >
> > I'm sure that it is not SL that cannot handle more than 4 hard disks,
> > but that something else is wrong with this system.
> >
> > > Any good ideas as to where this thing went wrong or how to fix problem.
> > > LVM still has the same problem when dealing with so many devices.
> >
> > I have a CentOS 6 box that at one time had about 27 physical volumes on
> > 27 physical LUNs in one volume group, with a single logical volume
> > containing a 30+TB XFS filesystem.  It has been a few releases back,
> > since I've consolidated those PV's into some larger LUNs (long story,
> > but related to CentOS 5 on VMware ESX 3.5 and ESX being limited to no
> > larger than 2TB LUNs and to a set of drive upgrades in our EMC Clariion
> > storage systems).  This is on fibre channel, and with multipath in place
> > the last drive device was around /dev/sdav or so (blew the mind of one
> > of our interns, who didn't understand that the drive after /dev/sdz is
> > /dev/sdaa!).
> >
> > Likewise another machine with CentOS 7 on it had 15 PV's on a fibre
> > channel SAN until I consolidated it down to a RAID 1 MD between two LUNs
> > of 11TB each.  No problems.
> >
> > Back in CentOS 3 and 4 days I ran one server with a RAID5 set on eight
> > 160GB PATA drives (a GSI Model 4C four-channel ISA IDE interface card,
> > and, yes, it was very slow, but it did work).  The resulting MDRAID
> > volume was data only; the OS was on a (don't laugh) DAC960-drive
> > external SCSI box with 12 18GB 10K RPM drives and ran quite well, all
> > things considered.
> >
> > > It looks like we will try BSD and some other Linux editions to see if
> > > they have these limitations.   My guess is that upstream vendor made
> > > the free RHT "criple ware" deliberately.
> >
> > Something else is going on here, and your guess is likely rather wrong.
> > I don't know what exactly is going wrong, but I have several EL 5, 6,
> > and 7 systems with far more than five drives that are working fine.
> >
> > One of these is an old Netburst Xeon box running EL6 with six SATA
> > drives in the chassis and 15 LUNs on the fibre channel.  The six SATA
> > drives are on three separate controller cards.  One of the cards has two
> > eSATA connectors, and I use those for imaging and for backups frequently.
> >
> > I have not seen any artificial limits on the number of 'drives' (with
> > fibre channel you don't think that way, you think in terms of LUNs).
>
> Thank You
> I was sure that there has to be a common thread.  There is another system
> available that has an identical hardware suite.   We can unplug the disk
> pack and try it on another hardware set.
> Then we will know if we have a bad mother board.
>
> Larry Linder

Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install 6th

[Larry Linder]

On Thursday October 8 2015 1:03 pm, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 10/07/2015 04:10 PM, Larry Linder wrote:
> > It appears that at least from our experiments SL cannot handle more than
> > 4 hard disks and this goes back to at least 5.9.   SL 6.7 identifies the
> > disks as all sda - sde but fails to mount 5th disk.
>
> I'm sure that it is not SL that cannot handle more than 4 hard disks,
> but that something else is wrong with this system.
>
> > Any good ideas as to where this thing went wrong or how to fix problem.
> > LVM still has the same problem when dealing with so many devices.
>
> I have a CentOS 6 box that at one time had about 27 physical volumes on
> 27 physical LUNs in one volume group, with a single logical volume
> containing a 30+TB XFS filesystem.  It has been a few releases back,
> since I've consolidated those PV's into some larger LUNs (long story,
> but related to CentOS 5 on VMware ESX 3.5 and ESX being limited to no
> larger than 2TB LUNs and to a set of drive upgrades in our EMC Clariion
> storage systems).  This is on fibre channel, and with multipath in place
> the last drive device was around /dev/sdav or so (blew the mind of one
> of our interns, who didn't understand that the drive after /dev/sdz is
> /dev/sdaa!).
>
> Likewise another machine with CentOS 7 on it had 15 PV's on a fibre
> channel SAN until I consolidated it down to a RAID 1 MD between two LUNs
> of 11TB each.  No problems.
>
> Back in CentOS 3 and 4 days I ran one server with a RAID5 set on eight
> 160GB PATA drives (a GSI Model 4C four-channel ISA IDE interface card,
> and, yes, it was very slow, but it did work).  The resulting MDRAID
> volume was data only; the OS was on a (don't laugh) DAC960-drive
> external SCSI box with 12 18GB 10K RPM drives and ran quite well, all
> things considered.
>
> > It looks like we will try BSD and some other Linux editions to see if
> > they have these limitations.   My guess is that upstream vendor made the
> > free RHT "criple ware" deliberately.
>
> Something else is going on here, and your guess is likely rather wrong.
> I don't know what exactly is going wrong, but I have several EL 5, 6,
> and 7 systems with far more than five drives that are working fine.
>
> One of these is an old Netburst Xeon box running EL6 with six SATA
> drives in the chassis and 15 LUNs on the fibre channel.  The six SATA
> drives are on three separate controller cards.  One of the cards has two
> eSATA connectors, and I use those for imaging and for backups frequently.
>
> I have not seen any artificial limits on the number of 'drives' (with
> fibre channel you don't think that way, you think in terms of LUNs).

Thank You
I was sure that there has to be a common thread.  There is another system 
available that has an identical hardware suite.   We can unplug the disk pack 
and try it on another hardware set. 
Then we will know if we have a bad mother board.

Larry Linder

Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install 5th try

[Lamar Owen]

On 10/07/2015 04:10 PM, Larry Linder wrote:

It appears that at least from our experiments SL cannot handle more than 4
hard disks and this goes back to at least 5.9.   SL 6.7 identifies the disks
as all sda - sde but fails to mount 5th disk.


I'm sure that it is not SL that cannot handle more than 4 hard disks, 
but that something else is wrong with this system.



Any good ideas as to where this thing went wrong or how to fix problem.
LVM still has the same problem when dealing with so many devices.


I have a CentOS 6 box that at one time had about 27 physical volumes on 
27 physical LUNs in one volume group, with a single logical volume 
containing a 30+TB XFS filesystem.  It has been a few releases back, 
since I've consolidated those PV's into some larger LUNs (long story, 
but related to CentOS 5 on VMware ESX 3.5 and ESX being limited to no 
larger than 2TB LUNs and to a set of drive upgrades in our EMC Clariion 
storage systems).  This is on fibre channel, and with multipath in place 
the last drive device was around /dev/sdav or so (blew the mind of one 
of our interns, who didn't understand that the drive after /dev/sdz is 
/dev/sdaa!).


Likewise another machine with CentOS 7 on it had 15 PV's on a fibre 
channel SAN until I consolidated it down to a RAID 1 MD between two LUNs 
of 11TB each.  No problems.


Back in CentOS 3 and 4 days I ran one server with a RAID5 set on eight 
160GB PATA drives (a GSI Model 4C four-channel ISA IDE interface card, 
and, yes, it was very slow, but it did work).  The resulting MDRAID 
volume was data only; the OS was on a (don't laugh) DAC960-drive 
external SCSI box with 12 18GB 10K RPM drives and ran quite well, all 
things considered.



It looks like we will try BSD and some other Linux editions to see if they
have these limitations.   My guess is that upstream vendor made the free
RHT "criple ware" deliberately.
Something else is going on here, and your guess is likely rather wrong.  
I don't know what exactly is going wrong, but I have several EL 5, 6, 
and 7 systems with far more than five drives that are working fine.


One of these is an old Netburst Xeon box running EL6 with six SATA 
drives in the chassis and 15 LUNs on the fibre channel.  The six SATA 
drives are on three separate controller cards.  One of the cards has two 
eSATA connectors, and I use those for imaging and for backups frequently.


I have not seen any artificial limits on the number of 'drives' (with 
fibre channel you don't think that way, you think in terms of LUNs).

Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install 4th try

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Larry Linder
 wrote:
>
> On Tuesday October 6 2015 11:07 am, Larry Linder wrote:
>> First step was to remove the 5th disk from the system.  I was mounted as
>> /sde1 After this is complete the install finished with out a problem.
>>
>> A long time ago we ran into this problem and it had to do with the number
>> of devices.
>> We used to run 32 SCSI drives on a server using two 16 device cards and
>> when the high speed serial stuff came out we were suddenly limited to 6
>> devices. - This from memory.
>>
>> The 5 SATA drives + DVD as a SATA drive is 6  Mother board is labeled 0  ->
>> 5 all ports are used.  We unplugged cable from 5th disk and the install
>> went normally.
>> It accepts sda1 - sda12, sdb1, sdc1, sdd1 and the DVD drive in 5th slot.
>>
>> Larry Linder
>>
>> On Monday October 5 2015 7:37 pm, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>> > First step is "stop partitioning and getting cutesy with your layout at
>> > install time." Adding extra disks and software configs, especially the
>> > /mysql that may conflict with SELinux, is begging for trouble at install
>> > time. See if you can bring it alive with a bare installation, on sda
>> > only.
>> >
>> > Nico Kadel-Garcia
>> > Email: nka...@gmail.com
>> > Sent from iPhone
>> >
>> > > On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:53, Larry Linder
>> > >  wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Dear Sir:
>> > >
>> > > We are building a new server and decided to use SL 6.7
>> > > The system is a quad core AMD with 32 G Ram and 5 T bytes of disk
>> > > space. The OS is installed on the sda1 - 10
>> > > /engr is installed on sdb1
>> > > /mysql is install on sdc1
>> > > /backup01 is on sdd1
>> > > /backup02 is on sde1
>> > >
>> > > The install progresses normally till it get to sde1
>> > >it appears to finish the format correctly and
>> > >when it come time to mount the device we get the following:
>> > >
>> > > "An ERROR Occurred Mounting /dev/sde1  /backup02 mount failed (9,none)
>> > > This is a fatal error and install cannot continue."
>> > >
>> > > Disk and cable have been swapped,  Port has been swapped.  Problem does
>> > > not follow port or hardware.
>> > > The first time it occurred Saturday we were able to do a walk back but
>> > > were not able to save anything as network had not been configured, but
>> > > we could do a walk back but couldn't  file a bug report.
>> > > The thing we noticed is that the second argument of all functions was
>> > > empty. Meaning a void !!! or a null string ??
>> > >
>> > > Second time with a known good disk for sde and another port on mother
>> > > board the error occurred again.
>> > >
>> > > The third time with new disk sde, cable, port it gave the same error
>> > > message but with Network set up so we could capture the problem.  This
>> > > time we were not able to do a walk back.  The only option was to reboot
>> > > and we are back to square 1.
>> > >
>> > > Any Ideas would be appreciated.
>> > >
>> > > Thank You
>> > > Larry Linder
>
> What we have tried.
> The downloaded DVD was error checked before we began this exercise so we are
> certain that the DVD set is good.
>
> The 5th. disk was connected to different port on mother board and if we limit
> the number of disks to 4 + DVD drive it works and install completes.
> We are convinced the Hardware suite is VALID.  The other output ports were
> vacated when removing a disk.
>
> This try we selected default on SL 6.7 to automatically set it up and use LVM
> to assign disk.   It proceeded normally and when it gets to sde1 we get an
> error message that it cannot format disk.   This disk will work as sdb sdc
> sdd.
> The walk back did not give a clue except that the second argument to function
> is null. or null string as in other tries.

>From your descriptions, you seem to be insisting on activating the
fifth disk at installation time. Please stop trying to activate
anything but the first disk for the "/" partition at install time, and
add the other disks later. Both LVM and resize2fs support this if you
need a merged array.

Installing just the OS, itself, at installation time gives you access
to kernel updates that may not be in 6.7, and should allow you to
activate the other components after the initial installation. This may
not be pretty, but it avoids any subtle bugs in the anaconda
installation suite.

It's clear from your note that  the "4 SATA porta, plus a 5fth one"
are not on the same controller and the 5ifth disk is on the
motherboard. Testing the motherboard SATA for compatibility means
*swapping* connectors, not just connecting the fifth one to a
different location or disconnecting.

You should also be able to use the live DVD to boot the system up and
see if all the drives are visible and can be partitioned and write
enabled, which may provide more informaiton.

> When in manual disk setup  there at least it formats sde but will not mount
> it.  Same walk back info but the error is now it 

Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install 5th try

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 4:10 PM, Larry Linder
 wrote:

> Install fails because it can't write  /boot to GPT partitioning.  SL5 does not
> understand this but relies on Master Boot Record.
>
> It appears that at least from our experiments SL cannot handle more than 4
> hard disks and this goes back to at least 5.9.   SL 6.7 identifies the disks
> as all sda - sde but fails to mount 5th disk.
>
> Any good ideas as to where this thing went wrong or how to fix problem.
> LVM still has the same problem when dealing with so many devices.
>
> It looks like we will try BSD and some other Linux editions to see if they
> have these limitations.   My guess is that upstream vendor made the free
> RHT "criple ware" deliberately.   If you could get the functions source code
> you would know in a few minutes.
> We have seen some mother boards with 12 sd ports.
>
> Larry Linder

That guess is ill-founded. Red Hat has been very, very good about
using GPL to publish their tools, especially kernels, and publishing
their installers. And I've personally various RHEL, CentOS, and
Scientific Linux systems on large environments with half a dozen
attached disks and never encountered what you're encountering. But I
do not partition anything but the "/" disk at installation time, i
always do the others later.

Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install 4th try

[Larry Linder]

On Tuesday October 6 2015 11:07 am, Larry Linder wrote:
> First step was to remove the 5th disk from the system.  I was mounted as
> /sde1 After this is complete the install finished with out a problem.
>
> A long time ago we ran into this problem and it had to do with the number
> of devices.
> We used to run 32 SCSI drives on a server using two 16 device cards and
> when the high speed serial stuff came out we were suddenly limited to 6
> devices. - This from memory.
>
> The 5 SATA drives + DVD as a SATA drive is 6  Mother board is labeled 0  ->
> 5 all ports are used.  We unplugged cable from 5th disk and the install
> went normally.
> It accepts sda1 - sda12, sdb1, sdc1, sdd1 and the DVD drive in 5th slot.
>
> Larry Linder
>
> On Monday October 5 2015 7:37 pm, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> > First step is "stop partitioning and getting cutesy with your layout at
> > install time." Adding extra disks and software configs, especially the
> > /mysql that may conflict with SELinux, is begging for trouble at install
> > time. See if you can bring it alive with a bare installation, on sda
> > only.
> >
> > Nico Kadel-Garcia
> > Email: nka...@gmail.com
> > Sent from iPhone
> >
> > > On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:53, Larry Linder
> > >  wrote:
> > >
> > > Dear Sir:
> > >
> > > We are building a new server and decided to use SL 6.7
> > > The system is a quad core AMD with 32 G Ram and 5 T bytes of disk
> > > space. The OS is installed on the sda1 - 10
> > > /engr is installed on sdb1
> > > /mysql is install on sdc1
> > > /backup01 is on sdd1
> > > /backup02 is on sde1
> > >
> > > The install progresses normally till it get to sde1
> > >it appears to finish the format correctly and
> > >when it come time to mount the device we get the following:
> > >
> > > "An ERROR Occurred Mounting /dev/sde1  /backup02 mount failed (9,none)
> > > This is a fatal error and install cannot continue."
> > >
> > > Disk and cable have been swapped,  Port has been swapped.  Problem does
> > > not follow port or hardware.
> > > The first time it occurred Saturday we were able to do a walk back but
> > > were not able to save anything as network had not been configured, but
> > > we could do a walk back but couldn't  file a bug report.
> > > The thing we noticed is that the second argument of all functions was
> > > empty. Meaning a void !!! or a null string ??
> > >
> > > Second time with a known good disk for sde and another port on mother
> > > board the error occurred again.
> > >
> > > The third time with new disk sde, cable, port it gave the same error
> > > message but with Network set up so we could capture the problem.  This
> > > time we were not able to do a walk back.  The only option was to reboot
> > > and we are back to square 1.
> > >
> > > Any Ideas would be appreciated.
> > >
> > > Thank You
> > > Larry Linder

What we have tried.
The downloaded DVD was error checked before we began this exercise so we are 
certain that the DVD set is good.

The 5th. disk was connected to different port on mother board and if we limit 
the number of disks to 4 + DVD drive it works and install completes.
We are convinced the Hardware suite is VALID.  The other output ports were 
vacated when removing a disk.

This try we selected default on SL 6.7 to automatically set it up and use LVM 
to assign disk.   It proceeded normally and when it gets to sde1 we get an 
error message that it cannot format disk.   This disk will work as sdb sdc 
sdd.
The walk back did not give a clue except that the second argument to function 
is null. or null string as in other tries.

When in manual disk setup  there at least it formats sde but will not mount 
it.  Same walk back info but the error is now it cannot mount disk.

Next we will try 5.11 on this hardware and see if it works.
another test is to install BSD.  Other people who use BSD report that they 
have mounted 99 devices with out a problem.

This box is not connected to our network as it is used all day.  Will connect 
it Saturday and see if we can file a bug report.

Larry Linder

Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install

[Larry Linder]

First step was to remove the 5th disk from the system.  I was mounted as /sde1
After this is complete the install finished with out a problem.

A long time ago we ran into this problem and it had to do with the number of 
devices.
We used to run 32 SCSI drives on a server using two 16 device cards and when 
the high speed serial stuff came out we were suddenly limited to 6 devices. - 
This from memory.

The 5 SATA drives + DVD as a SATA drive is 6  Mother board is labeled 0  -> 5
all ports are used.  We unplugged cable from 5th disk and the install went 
normally.
It accepts sda1 - sda12, sdb1, sdc1, sdd1 and the DVD drive in 5th slot.

Larry Linder

On Monday October 5 2015 7:37 pm, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> First step is "stop partitioning and getting cutesy with your layout at
> install time." Adding extra disks and software configs, especially the
> /mysql that may conflict with SELinux, is begging for trouble at install
> time. See if you can bring it alive with a bare installation, on sda only.
>
> Nico Kadel-Garcia
> Email: nka...@gmail.com
> Sent from iPhone
>
> > On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:53, Larry Linder 
> > wrote:
> >
> > Dear Sir:
> >
> > We are building a new server and decided to use SL 6.7
> > The system is a quad core AMD with 32 G Ram and 5 T bytes of disk space.
> > The OS is installed on the sda1 - 10
> > /engr is installed on sdb1
> > /mysql is install on sdc1
> > /backup01 is on sdd1
> > /backup02 is on sde1
> >
> > The install progresses normally till it get to sde1
> >it appears to finish the format correctly and
> >when it come time to mount the device we get the following:
> >
> > "An ERROR Occurred Mounting /dev/sde1  /backup02 mount failed (9,none) 
> > This is a fatal error and install cannot continue."
> >
> > Disk and cable have been swapped,  Port has been swapped.  Problem does
> > not follow port or hardware.
> > The first time it occurred Saturday we were able to do a walk back but
> > were not able to save anything as network had not been configured, but we
> > could do a walk back but couldn't  file a bug report.
> > The thing we noticed is that the second argument of all functions was
> > empty. Meaning a void !!! or a null string ??
> >
> > Second time with a known good disk for sde and another port on mother
> > board the error occurred again.
> >
> > The third time with new disk sde, cable, port it gave the same error
> > message but with Network set up so we could capture the problem.  This
> > time we were not able to do a walk back.  The only option was to reboot
> > and we are back to square 1.
> >
> > Any Ideas would be appreciated.
> >
> > Thank You
> > Larry Linder

Re: SL 6.7 Fails to finish install

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

First step is "stop partitioning and getting cutesy with your layout at install 
time." Adding extra disks and software configs, especially the /mysql that may 
conflict with SELinux, is begging for trouble at install time. See if you can 
bring it alive with a bare installation, on sda only.

Nico Kadel-Garcia
Email: nka...@gmail.com
Sent from iPhone

> On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:53, Larry Linder  
> wrote:
> 
> Dear Sir:
> 
> We are building a new server and decided to use SL 6.7
> The system is a quad core AMD with 32 G Ram and 5 T bytes of disk space.
> The OS is installed on the sda1 - 10
> /engr is installed on sdb1
> /mysql is install on sdc1
> /backup01 is on sdd1
> /backup02 is on sde1
> 
> The install progresses normally till it get to sde1 
>it appears to finish the format correctly and
>when it come time to mount the device we get the following:
> 
> "An ERROR Occurred Mounting /dev/sde1  /backup02 mount failed (9,none)  This 
> is a fatal error and install cannot continue."
> 
> Disk and cable have been swapped,  Port has been swapped.  Problem does not 
> follow port or hardware.
> The first time it occurred Saturday we were able to do a walk back but were 
> not able to save anything as network had not been configured, but we could do 
> a walk back but couldn't  file a bug report.   
> The thing we noticed is that the second argument of all functions was empty.  
>  
> Meaning a void !!! or a null string ??
> 
> Second time with a known good disk for sde and another port on mother board 
> the error occurred again.
> 
> The third time with new disk sde, cable, port it gave the same error message 
> but with Network set up so we could capture the problem.  This time we were 
> not able to do a walk back.  The only option was to reboot and we are back to 
> square 1.
> 
> Any Ideas would be appreciated.
> 
> Thank You
> Larry Linder

SL 6.7 Fails to finish install

[Larry Linder]

Dear Sir:

We are building a new server and decided to use SL 6.7
The system is a quad core AMD with 32 G Ram and 5 T bytes of disk space.
The OS is installed on the sda1 - 10
/engr is installed on sdb1
/mysql is install on sdc1
/backup01 is on sdd1
/backup02 is on sde1

The install progresses normally till it get to sde1 
it appears to finish the format correctly and
when it come time to mount the device we get the following:

"An ERROR Occurred Mounting /dev/sde1  /backup02 mount failed (9,none)  This 
is a fatal error and install cannot continue."

Disk and cable have been swapped,  Port has been swapped.  Problem does not 
follow port or hardware.
The first time it occurred Saturday we were able to do a walk back but were 
not able to save anything as network had not been configured, but we could do 
a walk back but couldn't  file a bug report.   
The thing we noticed is that the second argument of all functions was empty.   
Meaning a void !!! or a null string ??

Second time with a known good disk for sde and another port on mother board 
the error occurred again.

The third time with new disk sde, cable, port it gave the same error message 
but with Network set up so we could capture the problem.  This time we were 
not able to do a walk back.  The only option was to reboot and we are back to 
square 1.

Any Ideas would be appreciated.
 
Thank You
Larry Linder