Installation from sources went fine using ext3 filesystem and vanilla-sources. When the new system was first started there were a lot of Input / Output errors. Starting certain programs would result in a 'Input/Output error' while other programs were working fine. Every time the computer was restarted, the fsck program found errors. I have installed everything from source three times and one time I choose the ReiserFS for /dev/hda3 (i.e. /root) and in that case it couldn't even be mounted during system startup (I didn't forget to enable ext3 and reiserfs during kernel configuration).
which hardware do you use ?
hardware issue most likely here, considering you were using the vanilla-sources kernel. Getting this kind of I/O errors is definitely either hardware or kernel, since you were using a vanilla kernel, it isn't a gentoo problem, if you are able to confirm that is NOT hardware please send this bug report on to the Linux Kernel Devloper comunity. (Unless I'm missing something here in which case reopen the bug and say "this is a gentoo error, you fool") begin e-mail-------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 Nov 2002 19:27:54 -0100 From: Galeon McEwan <erin_gobragh@planet.nl> Subject: Bug 10798: Input / Output errors To: lostlogic@gentoo.org Cc: mholzer@gentoo.org X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.0.8 (1.0.8-10) Used hardware: CPU: Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) stepping 6 866 MHz and 256 MB memory. Samsung DVD-ROM SD-612 and Sony CD-RW CRX140E and Maxtor 5T040H4 40 GB harddrive. RTL-8139/8139C network device. System devices: 82801BA/CA/DB PCI bridge, 82801BA ISA bridge (LPC), 82815 815 chipset host bridge and memory controller hub, SB Live! MIDI/Game port, USB UHCI root hub. Video card: 32 MB NVIDIA Geforce 2GTS DDR 4AGP. As you can see, nothing special. end e-mail----------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to agree with you that it is either a hardware or a kernel problem, but I have installed Red Hat 8.0 and after that downloaded the vanilla kernel 2.4.19, compiled and installed it and . . . . it works fine! So now it is not so likely to be a hardware or kernel software problem (Yes, I configured the kernel the same way as I did during Gentoo installation).
maybe try to disable DMA it's a kernel option after booting use hdparm do enable DMA please report the result
Well then perhaps we have another issue with our toolchain, because if you have used the same kernel config and same kernel on 2 different distributions... but only had the problem here... I'm not sure what to tell ya
What gcc and binutils versions ?
It took some time, but I rebuild everything from source again. I disabled DMA during kernel config and used hdparm to activate DMA after booting. Believe it or not, but everything went fine. Next morning I turned my computer on, and there it started again: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda), sector 78643200. Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03. After so much time installing Gentoo, I didn't want to give up, so I booted from my Gentoo CD, I did a fsck on /dev/hda1 (/boot) and /dev/hda3 (/root) and no errors were found. Then I 'shutdown -r now' and booted from my harddisk. I suspected the same error, but now it worked fine again. Binutils version RedHat: 2.13.90.0.2-2 Binutils version Gentoo: 2.13.90.0.4 20020814 gcc version RedHat: 3.2-7 gcc version Gentoo: 3.2
could it be that you harddisk has bad sectors ?
I'm sorry, no bad sectors were found.
I installed Gentoo 1.4 rc1 and downloaded the vanilla kernel 2.4.20, configured and installed it. I configured the kernel as outlined by the Gentoo documentation and put in my own knowledge, as I did everytime. But now, everything works fine as it is supposed to be. I am not sure why the problem is solved or if I made a mistake in earlier attempts (don't think so). If someome wants more information than 'works for me' because it's important to find out the real reason why it works and didn't work before, just ask and I will try to figure it out or help you figure it out. Thanks.
