On Wed, 16 May 2007, William L. Maltby wrote: > Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 17:56:29 -0400 > From: William L. Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com> > Reply-To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> > To: CentOS General List <centos at centos.org> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] Re: Now I can't shutdown [was: Screen blanks afteral > setup (Centos 5)] > > On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 21:10 +0300, Itay wrote: > >> ** I failed to mention earlier that the media check prior to >> installation *failed*. I decided to go on with the installation >> because my own experience so far, and others', showed that >> failure does not necessarily imply bad media. But see below. > > Based on investigation I've done in response to the thread here, > > http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2007-April/079718.html > > and the advice by several in that thread, you need to have padding on > the media. I'm authoring a "SOLVED" message for that thread, but haven't > completed my tests. > [snip] > > Use one of the padding methods mentioned in that thread and you should > be OK and the errors should disappear. *panic* Bill, thank you for the detailed reply. I tried the padding technique - the media errors were gone; kernel panic - stayed. I hope that you or others may help me with this. Here is what I did: 1 Burnt i386 DVD using the padding method offered by Johnny Hughes http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2007-April/079828.html (Check sum OK.) 2 Booted to install + Media check OK + Finished installation w/o noticable problems - This time there were no error messages about i/o problems, bad sectors, etc. - anaconda.log had some warning messages regarding to some missing /etc, /usr, and few libs. (Similar to 1st installation.) + Rebooted from installer + Expected Setup Agent. Got *kernel panic* instead. + Second and third reboot have landed me in text-mode Setup Agent. 3 I tried several things, each one of them ended in *kernel panic* either before logging in as root, or some minutes after. The panic appeared after idling the machine for some time. 4 A couple of strange things + I have found out that the default run level was set to 3. When, as a root I tried 'telinit 5', the machine responded with a blank screen. I had to reset. + Rebooting the machine was accompanied with messages regarding ntp/clock skew. Later, I have found out that I have lost the network connection, probably while playing with the installation, so this probably explains the clock skew. Am not sure if this has any relevance. + At no point I was prompted to setup a non-root user. 5 For each crash / kernel panic I got a screen-load of trace and other cryptic output. Each time, so it seems, the output was different. *Q* Is there a way to dump those messages into a file? 6 Only suspicious thing I have found in /var/log/messages was lines like this May 19 11:27:36 bilbo kernel: ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 May 19 11:27:36 bilbo kernel: ata1.00: tag 0 cmd 0xb0 Emask 0x1 stat 0x51 err 0x4 (device error) May 19 11:27:36 bilbo kernel: ata1: EH complete 7 Also, /var/log/secure had these errors - I believe for every reboot. ... May 19 11:25:30 bilbo login: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1 May 19 11:26:06 bilbo login: pam_unix(login:session): session closed for user root May 19 11:26:09 bilbo sshd[2677]: Received signal 15; terminating. May 19 11:27:26 bilbo sshd[2687]: Server listening on :: port 22. May 19 11:27:26 bilbo sshd[2687]: error: Bind to port 22 on 0.0.0.0 failed: Address already in use. May 19 11:29:51 bilbo login: pam_unix(login:session): session opened for user root by LOGIN(uid=0) May 19 11:29:51 bilbo login: pam_selinux(login:session): Warning! Could not get new context for /dev/tty1, not relabeling: Invalid argument May 19 11:29:51 bilbo login: pam_selinux(login:session): usercon=(null), prev_context=system_u:object_r:tty_device_t May 19 11:29:51 bilbo login: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1 > My *guess* is that the application related errors you reported may be a > result of certain installation steps terminating early due to the false > I/O errors reported by the kernel/driver(s). > > HTH > -- > Bill Any recommendation how to proceed? (The most pressing question: is it the hardware? Should I take the box back to the seller?) Many thanks. -- Itay Furman <centos at nospammail.net> --