I install into a VMWare Fusion virtual machine using livecd-i686-installer-2008.0_beta1.iso. I use the GTK+ installer and choose recommended layout (creating /dev/sda1 to /dev/sda3) and no further options (all default). After restart the system stops the boot process: >> Activating mdev >> Determining root device... !! Block device /dev/sda3 is not a valid root device... !! Could not find the root block device in . When I type "shell" after this and look into /dev directory, there is no hd* or sd* node beside hdc which is the CD-ROM. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Actual Results: Newly installed system doesn't boot. Expected Results: System should have been installed correctly and booted. When I boot into the LiveCD again the controller is reported by lspci as 00:10.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1030 PCI-X Fusion-MPT Dual Ultra320 SCSI (rev 01) I can mount the partition that has been created by the installer before when I boot with the LiveCD. I think in installation to VMWare should be supported by the LiveCD as this is, probably not only for me, the primary platform to try different operating systems. Please let me know if you need more information.
You need to boot with 'doscsi' to have the initramfs load the modules for the virtual SCSI controller. If you had booted the CD with 'doscsi', the installer would have automatically added it to your kernel commandline. Just edit the kernel commandline in grub to add 'doscsi', and then add it to your grub.conf after you boot.
Should we just add a "hack" to the installer to automatically add 'doscsi' to the kernel commandline if the root device is /dev/sd[a-z][0-9]?
(In reply to comment #2) > Should we just add a "hack" to the installer to automatically add 'doscsi' to > the kernel commandline if the root device is /dev/sd[a-z][0-9]? Hi Andrew, thanks for your reply. The solution is actually in the documentation http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/2008.0/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=2 A newbie like I am is surprised that the installation runs fine but the installed system needs an additional parameter to boot. Therefore if such a "hack" would be possible and doesn't introduce potential new problems it would be great to have it. Reduced severity for minor as an easy work-around exists. It "works for me" now.
Andrew: While the hack might work, it could also (potentially) cause issues. One of the main reasons that "doscsi" isn't automatic in genkernel is that some SCSI cards/drivers do nasty things to some systems, even when the card isn't present in the system. I wish there were an easy way to tell the difference between SATA/SCSI disks. In fact, the reason why we decided to only do "doscsi" automatically when someone did it on the command line was for exactly this reason. All that being said, I think that I would just prefer make "doscsi" default in genkernel and make people who have issues use "noscsi" since I feel that the numbers are likely so small that would have a problem that we're really reducing functionality for far too many people. What do you think?
I'm all for that. The people who this would help probably far outweighs the people this would "hurt".
*** Bug 216697 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The livecd must be able to handle SCSI as it installs OK. The fact that it is not invoked with doscsi leads me to think that the defaults are different for the livecd and that the live cd has scsi and those with issues have to use noscsi. It would be helpful if, on the installed system, only devices that are relevent are loaded, rather than all the hard disk device drivers. It would knock quite a bit of time off the boot process. Most hardware manufacturers these days trys to cooperate since it reflects on them when things fail, so on balance I think doscsi is probably better. I seem to recall that CD writing, even on IDE required SCSI support. I may be going back a long time. How is this affected?
Fergus, we were discussing the initramfs, which has nothing to do with anything you brought up. I've gone ahead and added SCSI as default for the initramfs in SVN.
Simple, you only need doscsi option while booting
(In reply to comment #9) > Simple, you only need doscsi option while booting Wow, thanks for that "insightful" comment. Did you even read the rest of the bug?
seems to be fixed, tested with livedvd-i686-installer-2008.0_beta2.iso
OK. This is resolved in genkernel 3.4.10, which is now in the tree and stable.
I ran into a similar bug with minimal install Beta_2 on a Core2 server. It was solved by compiling the SATA drivers into the kernel <*> and not as a module <M>.
