Ubiquity can't find the sata hard disk (promise 376 chip)

[JorSol]

Binary package hint: dmraid

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1, but the installer do not detect the hard drive I have. In LiveCD mode I can see, mount and work with the partitions of my hard drive but the installer just don't see it...

My motherboard is an MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR which has a Promise FastTrack 376 SATA controller.

I started to experience this problem back to Karmic which I have to install using the alternate cd... I found that this problem is related with dmraid, and I have to uninstall dmraid to be able to install Ubuntu. The raid mode of the drive is 0+1 Stripe, it's autoconfigured by the fasttrack utility in performance mode.

Tried to boot with the 'nodmraid' option and it didn't work,
I remove the raid using the bios utility, but it didn't work,
then I erase the metadata using the -E swith of dmraid and It works, it shows up in ubiquity, and was able to install Ubuntu, BUT if the drive don't have the raid mode enable it refuses to boot... is really odd that the hdd needs to be in raid mode, but It's ok if works... It's more easy to simply uninstall dmraid (apt-get remove dmraid) to make it work. I can make more test and provide more info if needed.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Mar 20 15:07:48 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta i386 (20100318)
Package: ubiquity 2.2.6
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=es_NI.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-16.25-generic
SourcePackage: ubiquity
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-16-generic i686

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Sometimes dmraid finds metadata when it shouldn't (either because of
previous uses of dmraid, or because of a bug). Have you tried booting
with the 'nodmraid' option? It's on the F6 menu on the live CD because
some people need this.

Your syslog confirms this:

  Mar 20 20:54:59 ubuntu activate-dmraid: Serial ATA RAID disk(s) detected. If this was bad, boot with 'nodmraid'.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Yes, if you previously used the disks in raid mode and no longer wish you, then you need to remove the raid metadata from the disks by either destroying the raid set with the bios utility, or the -E switch to dmraid. Simply disabling the raid mode in the bios leaves the metadata on disk and the bios ignores it, but Ubuntu does not know that and will continue to try using it.

If this does not resolve your issue, please update this report.

[JorSol (jorsol)]

Tried to boot with the 'nodmraid' option and it didn't work,
I remove the raid using the bios utility, but it didn't work,
then I erase the metadata using the -E swith of dmraid and It works, it shows up in ubiquity, and was able to install Ubuntu, but is by far more easy to simply uninstall dmraid, and I don't know why the 'nodmraid' don't work (probably another bug?).

I will provide more info when I make more tests...

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

I'm marking this bug as invalid since this is a system configuration error, not a bug. I believe that Ubiquity intentionally does not display disks that have been identified by blkid as members of a dmraid set, since you are supposed to use the raid device, not the underlying physical disks. At any rate, there isn't anything wrong with dmraid.

To clarify, it is a misconfiguration of your system to set up a raid set in the bios, then turn off the bios raid support and try to install Ubuntu to the individual disks in the raid. You either use raid, or you don't. You should not set it up, then try to ignore it.

[JorSol (jorsol)]

Ok, lets guess that is a misconfiguration of my system, but isn't supposed that the nodmraid option should ignore the metadata of the drrive? or disable it self (dmraid) so it can work like is not installed?

Why I have to uninstall/remove/purge dmraid to be able to make it work like it always worked? what "nodmraid" do exacly?

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

AFAIK, the nodmraid boot option just prevents dmraid from being run to activate raid arrays. Removing the package should have no further effect beyond that. blkid should still identify the drive as a raid member, which I believe causes the installer to not show it.

[Rush Tonop Online (rush-online)]

Fresh install Lucid 10.04 (release) on MSI G33M MS-7357 ver 1 caused the same bug. Removing 'dmraid' package solved problem.

[proze (paul-prozesky)]

I have the same issue. MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR with one 300GB SATA drive on the Promise controller integrated into the motherboard. The drive has never been part of a RAID array, it's just set up on the controller so that the rest of the system can see it. The 10.04 installer (and 9.10) doesn't see the drive until I manually remove dmraid. I understand that it's by design from the comments above, but I'm adding the comment to confirm the situation.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Then your belief that the drive has never been part of a raid array seems to be incorrect. If you reinstall dmraid and run sudo dmraid -n /dev/sda ( assuming that sda is the drive in question ) and it prints out the metadata, then the drive was, and for our purposes, still is, part of a raid array. If that is the case and you are not really using it in an array then you should run sudo dmraid -E /dev/sda to erase the raid metadata.

[JorSol (jorsol)]

The problem is that when the metadata is erased, Ubuntu installs correctly
but after the reboot it won't boot, it seems that the configuration requires
that the array is present (even if not used like array)...

But I repeat the nodmraid option in the livecd should be exactly that,
disable the dmraid, but it simply don't work like that, It's necesary to
uninstall dmraid. I belevie when installed with alternate cd Ubuntu don't
have this problem.

[Danny Wood (danwood76)]

After erasing the metadata you need to restart your machine so that dmraid is unloaded and the disk is allowed to be sda.
So boot with the live CD and erase the metadata, reboot, then install.

[D. Hugh Redelmeier (hugh-mimosa)]

I experienced this too when trying to install Ubuntu 10.04 i386 (released version).

My computer is an old eMachine, with the original disk. It has never been RAIDed. Heck, the machine doesn't have the appropriate controller and has never had a second drive.

I had a difficult time figuring out what was going on from the symptom (no disks found for installation). I ended up adding tracing instructions to the shell script /lib/partman/init.d/30partd and staring at /var/log/user.log. Yuck.

I found "dmraid -r -d" said
  DEBUG: not isw at -224961536
  DEBUG: isw trying hard coded -2115 offset.
  DEBUG: not isw at -226043392
  /dev/sda: pdc, "pdc_jjacgccf", stripe, ok, 234441472 sectors, data@ 0

I don't know what to make of this, but I did a "dmraid -r -E" based on this launchpad entry. Seems to work.

I hate to think what a random user would have done in this case.

I had no trouble installing Fedora 4 on this box years ago.

[Rush Tonop Online (rush-online)]

@Phillip Susi, millions of potential Ubuntu users thanks you. Seems like you are working for MS. I meet this bug with three last releases at home computer, and four computers at lab where I work. Thank you again, next release we meet the same (at least 2 y.o. bug).

People, seems we must go to #ubiquity (https://launchpad.net/ubiquity) and report this bug there.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Attempting to insult me by association with another entity you seem to have a pathological hatred for is a violation of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. I suggest you find a better outlet for your frustration.

What you might do is file a feature enhancement request for ubiquity to show disks that are part of a ( possibly broken ) raid array, and offer the option to remove them from that array, freeing them up for normal use. That way if you have old forgotten raid settings you no longer wish to use, it would be obvious and a solution just a click away.

[Rush Tonop Online (rush-online)]

Attempting to insult me with diagnosis you seem to be a psychiatrist. Hope you are not.

I think this bug related to dmraid. Hard drives never been powered on, BIOS never been configured to support RAID. I see that with my eyes at least on 4 completely new parts.

Ok, I'll ask ubiquity developers to workaround for this bug, or may be I must ask Award/Phoenix/Other developrers. But not dmraid developers. Why ?

[Danny Wood (danwood76)]

This is not a bug in dmraid.
It is just the way it works.

If your drives have the promise metadata on them they must have been used for that purpose.
It can't just magically appear on the disk. You probably have setup the disks in the proimise BIOS controller!

[D. Hugh Redelmeier (hugh-mimosa)]

I see no value in insults.

I hit this problem. It is real. This launchpad entry helped me work around the problem. I expect never to hit it again. I'm here to help make things better for other Ubuntu users.

My disk drive has never been used in RAID and yet dmraid detected that it had.
How could this happen? Is the test subject to false positives?

You can see a little diagnostic output in #16.

A few more details. My machine is an eMachine T2341 http://emachines.com/support/product_support.html?cat=Desktops&subcat=T%20Series&model=T2341.

It came with a 40G drive. I replaced it with a 120G drive. I initialized by dd'ing the whole 40G drive to the 120G drive (not partition by partition) using a live CD and then using the usual Linux tools to adjust the partitioning. All this was it 2004 January. So any RAID fingerprint would have come from the original 40G drive supplied by eMachines. RAID and Promise are nowhere to be found in the user guide.

When I first got the machine, I had no problem installing Fedora Core 4. In 2008 I had no problem installing Ubuntu 8.04. My first trouble was with my recent installation of Ubuntu 10.04.

There is no Promise controller on this machine and yet the RAID fingerprint discovered was for a Promise format. Would it make sense for dmraid to issue a diagnostic when it finds an anomaly like that? If so, would it make sense for Ubiquity to make that diagnostic visible to the (otherwise baffled) user?

[JorSol (jorsol)]

My problem is that the system won't boot if the hard drive don't have the
"raid" metadata... in earlier versions of Ubuntu this was not a problem...

I wish I can send you my computer so you can use it like a rat-lab, THEN you
can said is a problem that can't be solved in dmraid... but if you only can
said that dmraid works like this just because it should work like this then
you are denying the problem.

[Danny Wood (danwood76)]

As already stated this is no bug in dmraid!
Also this is not a support forum!

To detect if there is a promise array disk dmraid scans the metadata offsets for "Promise Technology, Inc."
This string has to be on the disks at that specific location on the disks you have and this is created by the promise RAID controller.
Three users out of the thousands of downloads is a small proportion of error and in my opinion is due to misconfiguration.

Official support for dmraid was only added in the previous release and ubiquity support for it was added only in this release so it is still young.

What we need is ubiquity to question the user over dmraid but nothing can be done from dmraid as it provides all the tools and information that ubiquity requires. A feature request needs to be assigned to ubiquity in order for something like this to occur.
So if you want something done about it that is the place.

Dmraid is not responsible for this error and insulting the developers is not going to get anyone anywhere.
Please file a feature request against Ubiquity!

[D. Hugh Redelmeier (hugh-mimosa)]

I added to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/573618

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

On 6/28/2010 11:53 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> It came with a 40G drive. I replaced it with a 120G drive. I
> initialized by dd'ing the whole 40G drive to the 120G drive (not
> partition by partition) using a live CD and then using the usual Linux
> tools to adjust the partitioning. All this was it 2004 January. So any
> RAID fingerprint would have come from the original 40G drive supplied by
> eMachines. RAID and Promise are nowhere to be found in the user guide.

Actually the metadata would not have been copied from the 40g drive
since only the first 40g of the new drive would have been written to by
dd, and the raid metadata lives at the very end of the drive. Sounds
like you bought the 120g drive on ebay from someone who had been using
it in a raid.

> There is no Promise controller on this machine and yet the RAID
> fingerprint discovered was for a Promise format. Would it make sense
> for dmraid to issue a diagnostic when it finds an anomaly like that? If
> so, would it make sense for Ubiquity to make that diagnostic visible to
> the (otherwise baffled) user?

As I said before, it would make sense for ubiquity to indicate the disks
are part of a raid and give the option to erase the raid metadata.

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