Posted by NewConvert on 2009/7/5 2:44:10

I'm installing CentOS for the first time. It seemed to work, but then didn't manage to boot after the install said it had completed successfully. Tried rebooting a few times after removing DVD. Always goes through the BIOS, RAID, etc, then hangs with a cursor at top left of screen. Left it for a few minutes in case it was just slow, but nothing changed. I'm not sure what to do to debug this as I'm not a Linux sysadmin, though I know a few commands. What files do I check, and for what? I think I can get linux rescue going, but I don't know what I would do after that.

Hardware: Asus P5Q motherboard, 8Gb RAM, 6 x 500 Gb SATA 2 drives (configured via pre-OS utility into 3 RAID 1 drives, all recognized fine during install, only 1 formatted and used as I want the others later for xen domU's), nice nVidia Graphics card (also recognized fine).

Install procedure: created install DVD, managed to get it to recognize the drive as an IDE but not as a CD-ATAPI drive, this did initial boot to install procedure, but then it couldn't find the drive anymore (or maybe, I couldn't tell it where the drive was properly), so I used http to get the images again. I unselected Gnome desktop, added Server and Server GUI (maybe something else too).

TIA for advice on how to proceed.

Cheers,
NewConvert (hopefully, at least)

Posted by gerald_clark on 2009/7/6 15:05:01

Do not try to use motherboard Fake RAID.
Please do the required Wiki and Documentation reading.

http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=47
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos#head-8645d964d7f4fe7727cec9f9971b76c8b1b77afd
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Deployment_Guide/ch-raid.html
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Installation_Guide/s1-diskpartitioning-x86.html

Also the Forum search function will turn up many RAID threads.