OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: R.M. Klippstein on October 22, 2015, 09:21:22 pm

Title: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: R.M. Klippstein on October 22, 2015, 09:21:22 pm
I'm trying to add a third hard drive to existing setup, this third drive is a WD500AKS. I can't install eCS-bII on it because of the problem with LVM not being able to be initiated because partitions on this new drive cannot be tagged as startable. I've tried everything I know of to get around this problem, but  – no luck. The latest thing I tried was using DFSee and creating a Primary partition as FAT32 and was able to tag is as startable, but then trying to install eCS to it resulted in the usual Failed to initialize Logical Volume Magament – Please close LVM.EXE – etc!
Hopefully someone knows how to cure this problem, Thanks for  any ideas.
  Ohh, by the way, I also tried removing the other H.D drives and tried to install to just the WD500AKS
and that didn't work either.

klipp
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: ivan on October 23, 2015, 12:23:20 am
What motherboard and what are the other two drives?

You may be having a problem if the first two drives are ide and this is sata which may require you to check the bios and set the sata to legacy rather than ahci.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Doug Bissett on October 23, 2015, 06:35:42 am
It is likely that the drive geometry is invalid for OS/2. Use DFSEE to wipe the front end of the drive (make sure you get the right one), then reboot, and try LVM again. Once you get a valid geometry, and partition the drive using LVM, it should work.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: mopar_guy on October 23, 2015, 04:36:36 pm
I thought that a startable partition has to be on one of the first two physical disks.  If you initially had this set up as disk 3, the LVM has probably used a different disk geometry.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Doug Bissett on October 23, 2015, 06:08:30 pm
I thought that a startable partition has to be on one of the first two physical disks.  If you initially had this set up as disk 3, the LVM has probably used a different disk geometry.

I don't think the geometry changes, just because the disk is not one of the first two physical units (but I could be wrong). What likely happened is that the disk was shipped set by/for windows, which uses an incompatible geometry. If you don't wipe it, and let LVM initialize it from scratch, the geometry is not changed, and remains incompatible. Beside that, he said that he tried it as the only disk, which eliminates the "first two drives" possibility.

You must also remember that Air Boot doesn't use the concept of "startable". It is a program that loads from the MBR, and it handles up to 24 (if I remember correctly) partitions, no matter what physical disk they are on. The eCS installer knows about that. The old Boot Manager had it's own partition, and that needed to be startable, and on one of the first two physical disks.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: R.M. Klippstein on October 23, 2015, 10:33:36 pm
Hi ivan & Doug, This is turning out to be a REAL S.O.B:! First of all, this is on an AMD motherboard (Asus M4A88TD-v EVO/USB3) Drive #1 is WD6400 -Sata, 600gb, Drive #2 is Seagate ST3500413a -Sata, 500gb. The drive I'm trying to add as Drive #3 is WD5000AKS -Sata, 500gb.
  I wiped the drive like Doug said and then tried installing with just Drive's 1 & 3 connected  – no go said there was no partition on drive, I installed 2 partitions, using DFSee one OS2-LVM and a FAT 32, both installed an were usable from both Windoz & Linux. Then back to eCS install which crapped out with the “Failed to inialize Logical Volume Management- LVM.EXE –etc”. So next I Disconnected all drives and just connected the WD5000 and re-ran eCS install – same error! The next thing I'm going to do tomorrow is to try installing the WD500 on a Lenovo Desktop, it only has space for one H.D. So it will be a direct install from the eCS beta II CD.
  It looks to me that there are two different possibilities – The WD500 has problems (even though it works well with Windos & Linux or (God forbid) My ASUS has problems (it is a production machine!)
I guess I'll maybe know more tomorrow after I try it on the Lenovo.
Anybody got any further ideas?

Thanks  klipp
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: ivan on October 23, 2015, 11:33:57 pm
All I can add is that we have heard of a few problems with the WD5000AKS installing Linux.  One of our clients had problems with one used as a replacement on one of their machines, nothing except windows would install on it so we replaced it with a Seagate Barracuda 500 Gb and gave the WD to one of my service guys for his son that is into gaming.

Not the sort of thing you want to hear, sorry.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Doug Bissett on October 24, 2015, 12:40:51 am
Quote
I wiped the drive like Doug said and then tried installing with just Drive's 1 & 3 connected  – no go said there was no partition on drive, I installed 2 partitions, using DFSee one OS2-LVM and a FAT 32, both installed an were usable from both Windoz & Linux.


Did you let the eCS installer fix the "no partition"problem", then reboot? After that, you should be able to use the installer (miniLVM) to build all of the partitions (don't even think about using windows, or Linux, to do that - even with DFSEE).

When you used DFSEE, was it booted to OS/2? If not, it will probably set the drive up as windows expects to find it, which is wrong for OS/2.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: R.M. Klippstein on October 24, 2015, 05:59:36 pm
Doug, The eCS installer never Fixes the "no partition" problem, I can only quit the attempted install. Supposedly eCS will install a basic partition, but it never does! This is what is causing the problem and I can't seem to figure out how to get eCS to setup that initial partition.
Thanks for the replies & help.

klipp
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: ivan on October 24, 2015, 07:18:55 pm
Hi Klipp,

One last thought.  Have you tried using DFSee to make the partitions AND write the LVM info for each partition?

You could try setting up - for example - a 2Gb HPFS partition and use the remainder as a JFS volume.  In theory the installer should find those partitions and you should be able to let the installer format them.

Edit to add:  If my memory of the pictures I have seen of the eCS installer is correct then doing it this way cuts out the use of the mini LVM partitioning because the installer seeing a partitioned disk should offer those partitions in the 'where to install' page and also allow you to format them.

Also, if you use DFSee with all the drives in place you will be able to give the partitions on the drive consecutive drive letters that won't mess with what you already have.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Andi B. on October 24, 2015, 07:41:49 pm
One thing that came to mind is I vaguely remember you can't install into a logical (JFS) partition if there is not at least one other primary partition on the drive. IIRC DFsee can setup the partitions that way but eCS can not install afterwards.

Another problem would be disks with 4k sectors. Such disk are not usable with OS/2. But is should be not a problem for you as 4k sector disks are usually > 1TB big. And the 2TB 4k disks I've seen does have a 512B sector compatibility mode.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Doug Bissett on October 24, 2015, 07:49:38 pm
Doug, The eCS installer never Fixes the "no partition" problem, I can only quit the attempted install. Supposedly eCS will install a basic partition, but it never does! This is what is causing the problem and I can't seem to figure out how to get eCS to setup that initial partition.
Thanks for the replies & help.

klipp

It always has, for me (it is not a partition, it is simply the container for the partitions - LVM adds the partitions, now called volumes, later). The front of the disk must be wiped by DFSEE, then boot the eCS install DVD. It will eventually do a scan on the drive, and discover that there is nothing on it, then it will offer to fix the problem. Accept the offer, and it will tell you to reboot. Do so, and start the install from scratch. This time the disk check should be happy. Continue, and it should decide that there are no installable volumes, and it will open miniLVM. There, you make all of the partitions, and add the boot manager (which should install Air Boot). I recommend making only ONE primary partition, on the first drive, which would usually be used for windows. Make all of the rest of them logical, even on other physical disks. The next step will offer to format the selected boot drive. Do so (I highly recommend JFS). Then, format the rest of the eCS drives, before continuing.

It occurs to me, that there may be a BIOS setting that will block writing to the boot record (claiming to be an antivirus measure). Make sure that is off, or it won't allow DFSEE and miniLVM to write the updated data to the boot record.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Dave Yeo on October 24, 2015, 08:30:16 pm
...
Another problem would be disks with 4k sectors. Such disk are not usable with OS/2. But is should be not a problem for you as 4k sector disks are usually > 1TB big. And the 2TB 4k disks I've seen does have a 512B sector compatibility mode.

I'm using a 1 TB drive that has 4kb sectors, works fine as the drive hardware presents the sectors as 512b though it is helps to use something like dfsee to partition so the real 4kb sectors line up with the JFS 4kb file blocks.
I did have to wipe and repartition the drive and install airboot as bootmanager got really confused when I added the 1 TB drive.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: R.M. Klippstein on October 24, 2015, 09:11:20 pm
Hey Doug, I plugged the disk into the Lenovo and it worked just as you described. There is apparently something screwed up in my ASUS M4A88TD as it NEVER displays the screen saying "No installable volumes were found on you're system. The volume manager will now start" it goes to “Failed to inialize Logical Volume Management- LVM.EXE –etc”. instead. It never starts the Logical Volume Manager!
I don't see how this can be anything screwed up in either the Hard Drive or the eCS install CD !
Any ideas? I'm going "Brain Dead" over this!

Thanks, klipp
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Dave Yeo on October 24, 2015, 09:26:59 pm
Possibly a driver issue, probably the AHCI driver but possibly even ACPI.
Can you update those and then put the drive back in your new box and test?
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Doug Bissett on October 24, 2015, 10:48:23 pm
Okay, I just did some experimenting in a virtual machine. I started with 3 virtual disks (3 physical disks), and a optical drive, configured. All are set for SATA using AHCI. The first two disks are 2048 Mbytes, and each has a primary partition with eCS installed. The third disk is an advanced LVM drive. All are JFS.

I added a 4th virtual disk (physical). I then installed eCS. It found the drive, and allowed me to manage it, and install to it. I defined a logical volume, and formatted it as JFS. Then, the installer did it's thing, and rebooted. At reboot, it finished the install.

Note that SATA ports above 4 (starts at 0) *may* have some limitations (BIOS limits, depending on the machine), and it appears that any CD/DVD drives need to be on higher port numbers than the disks, or Air Boot won't see the disks.

So:

eCS can be installed to a third, or fourth (possibly more), physical disk, in either a primary, or logical, partition, with, or without, a primary partition present.

A disk (any size) may come with geometry that windows likes, but is invalid for eCS (that needs to be changed by eliminating the data at the front of the disk using DFSEE - I think it does 30 sectors - and let the eCS install tool fix the problem). Windows is perfectly happy with an eCS friendly geometry. Don't forget to back up anything that you may want to keep, before messing with it.

Be aware that using DFSEE under any OS other than OS/2 (eCS) can cause DFSEE to use windows friendly geometry, rather than OS/2 friendly geometry.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Doug Bissett on October 24, 2015, 10:55:29 pm
Quote
Any ideas? I'm going "Brain Dead" over this!

I think you need to search the BIOS for something that protects the boot sector from being written. I assume that the machine is UEFI, so you also need to find all of the legacy settings, and enable them.
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: Dave Yeo on October 25, 2015, 02:00:55 am

Note that SATA ports above 4 (starts at 0) *may* have some limitations (BIOS limits, depending on the machine), and it appears that any CD/DVD drives need to be on higher port numbers than the disks, or Air Boot won't see the disks.

Here my DVD device is on Port (controller) 0 and I installed eCS 2.2b2 without any problems. IIRC I was still using Bootmanager when I first installed and switched to airboot when I upgraded to a 1TB disk (on port 1)
Title: Re: Can't install an additional Hard Drive -- LVM.EXE problem
Post by: R.M. Klippstein on October 26, 2015, 01:58:49 am
Hi Dave, You were right once more! It was the AHCI Driver. I got rid of it in the phase1 config.sys and the accompanying .add file in phase2 config.sys and the hard drive works fine now! Now that I think about it ACHI Driver was one of the original bugs when BetaII was released a couple of years ago.
   Thanks for bailing me out.

klipp