topic Re: SLES8 / UnitedLinux 1.0 on 6400R disk problems in Operating System - Linux

SLES8 / UnitedLinux 1.0 on 6400R disk problems

Michael Williams_6 — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 03:17:21 GMT

Hello there!

I'm trying to install SLES8 on a few aging 6400R's to get some life out of them (save's us purchasing windows 2003 and a new system to boot!)

However, while the installation was a complete success, after upgrading to Service Pack 3, in Yast, I can not modify the disks any more, it recognises the disks in the system, but says the start and end blocks are nil and doesn't recognise any partitions. Additionally, I'm unable to add printers as one of the screens when you click next is completely blank.

We have about 20 installations of SLES8 now, and this only happens on our 5 6400R servers (I know they're not supported, but hoping this is a simple fix!).

I can do these functions using the CLI, but the Windows people in the Admin team get a bit confuzzed at this, so would like to get the functionality back!

Has anyone seen this and know how to fix it?

Thanks for your help!

Re: SLES8 / UnitedLinux 1.0 on 6400R disk problems

Roberto Polli — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:43:14 GMT

Try to do it without YAST.
Console is your best friend!

Does fdisk work?

Pax, R.

Re: SLES8 / UnitedLinux 1.0 on 6400R disk problems

Michael Williams_6 — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:46:34 GMT

Hi there, as mentioned in my original post, I can get all this to work with the CLI (command line interface). But we have Windows people in our admin team who are too used to a GUI, so would really like to get this to work with Yast as well as the CLI.

Any suggestions?

Re: SLES8 / UnitedLinux 1.0 on 6400R disk problems

Roberto Polli — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:53:34 GMT

are you able to intercept YAST commands (running a while+ps script) or find something into log files?

Peace, R>

Thx for CLI, I didn't know its meaning

Re: SLES8 / UnitedLinux 1.0 on 6400R disk problems

Steven E. Protter — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:58:07 GMT

Fact of life in Unix administration. Be it single user mode or your disk problems, sometimes you need to use the command line.

The management commands are not so complex that you can't build a little wrapper script.

This issue is probably due to scsi or bios compatability issues with the OS and probably isn't high on the Linux Distributors to list to fix. If they even know about it.

The best you can do is document the problem and make them aware so that they might decide to fix it in the next service pack.

SEP

Re: SLES8 / UnitedLinux 1.0 on 6400R disk problems

Rick Beldin — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 11:04:18 GMT

You might be able to use strace to capture what Yast is trying to issue as system calls. It likely is talking to a pipe and so you could what it is doing on the read/write system calls. This might give you an idea what is going wrong.

In reality, this is something that a support person responsible for *fixing* Yast would be doing. You might be able to understand *what* is going on and not be able to address it.

Have you taken it up with Suse? Is the 6400R a certified platform? Errata?