Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

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aussie
Posts: 101
Joined: 2018/06/30 12:21:31

Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by aussie » 2019/11/19 00:26:02

Hello,

I installed Centos 7 on my laptop. The install went fine and I get to the login screen. I select the user and enter the password and then get these error messages.

[Firmware Bug] the BIOS has corrupted the hw-PMU resources (MSR 38d is b0)
mce: Unable to init device /dev/mcelog (RC: -5)
tmpfs: Bad mount huge
SR 2:0:0:0 [sr0] out of memory
Please enter passphase for disk vggroup00-var

If I enter the passphase it continues for awhile and prints some stuff and then reboots.

It has the latest firmware update and 12GB of memory.
It ran Centos 6 for years and also runs Windows 10 fine.
Any suggestions?

Aussie

aussie
Posts: 101
Joined: 2018/06/30 12:21:31

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by aussie » 2019/11/19 11:37:43

Hello,

I reinstalled Centos 6. It would seem Centos 7 is not compatible with my laptop. It is a shame Centos 6 goes EOL November, 2020.

Aussie

BShT
Posts: 584
Joined: 2019/10/09 12:31:40

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by BShT » 2019/11/19 13:24:26

if you have an HP hardware try to disable "Processor Power and Performance Monitoring" at BIOS

aussie
Posts: 101
Joined: 2018/06/30 12:21:31

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by aussie » 2019/11/20 04:50:57

The laptop is ASUS N73SV, i7 processor, 12GB memory. Purchased in early 2012.

https://www.asus.com/Laptops/N73SV/

Aussie

aussie
Posts: 101
Joined: 2018/06/30 12:21:31

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by aussie » 2019/11/23 06:13:28

Hello,

I thought more about this problem and came up with enough details and a suspect problem, enough to submit a defect.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1775613

Aussie

desertcat
Posts: 843
Joined: 2014/08/07 02:17:29
Location: Tucson, AZ

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by desertcat » 2019/11/23 11:40:52

aussie wrote:
2019/11/23 06:13:28
Hello,

I thought more about this problem and came up with enough details and a suspect problem, enough to submit a defect.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1775613

Aussie
First this *should* run CentOS 7.7 without much of a problem. I checked out your bug report. I hope you can clarify something for me:

Here is your disk layout:

Additional info:
This is my disc configuration
[dan@laptop ~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/dm-2 145G 6.5G 131G 5% /
tmpfs 5.8G 2.3M 5.8G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/dm-15 413G 388G 3.8G 100% /backup
/dev/sdb1 969M 65M 854M 8% /boot
/dev/dm-12 193G 30G 154G 17% /home
/dev/dm-10 9.5G 23M 9.0G 1% /tmp
/dev/dm-13 9.5G 415M 8.6G 5% /var
/dev/dm-14 4.7G 15M 4.5G 1% /var/log
/dev/dm-16 4.7G 10M 4.5G 1% /var/log/audit
/dev/dm-11 193G 64G 120G 35% /vm

So I Googled /dev/dm-* as I have not heard of /dev/dm-*. Most of what *I* am familiar with is something like /dev/sda(b,c,...) Indeed your drive *seems* to be /dev/sdb*. In most partitioning schemes you have Primary partitions 1-3, then you have start your EXTENDED partitions that start 5-..... /dev/sd*4 is the Extended Partition Group if you will. You have /dev/sdb1 which is /boot, but everthing after that is /dev/dm-*. Apparently dm stands for Device Mapper Here is what I learned:

"The device mapper is a framework provided by the Linux kernel for mapping physical block devices onto higher-level virtual block devices. It forms the foundation of the logical volume manager (LVM), software RAIDs and dm-crypt disk encryption, and offers additional features such as file system snapshots."

You then go on to say in your bug report: "When installing Centos 7.7 I used allocate space as a standard partition instead of LVM." Yet /dev/dm-* seems to be an LVM sort of thing -- probably wrong, but.. reason for my question. IF your drive is LVM partitioned where are say /dev/dm-1,3,4-9?!?. ...Or is CentOS 7.7 on a Virtual Machine?!? If CentOS 7.7 is installed as a PHYSICAL Machine, could you simply install it as say /dev/sdb2-3, 4-12?!?

Just Curious.

aussie
Posts: 101
Joined: 2018/06/30 12:21:31

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by aussie » 2019/11/24 03:47:22

Hi Desertcat,

I setup the disc configuration in Centos 6. I made /boot and swap a standard partition and LVM everything else. I made /boot and swap a standard partition because they require contiguous disc space. LVM does not guarantee contiguous space, in fact my backup partition is spread across two discs. In Centos 6 you could mix and match standard partitions and LVM partitions, but in Centos 7 you have to chose one or the other for everything. The problem I had was when you select swap it set the space to zero and will not let you specify a size. You have to delete swap and add it in again. This is why I selected a standard partition to allocate new space. I didn't have any available space in LVM. So I had a mix and match of standard partitions and LVM in Centos 7. Maybe this messed up their new algorithm.

Aussie

desertcat
Posts: 843
Joined: 2014/08/07 02:17:29
Location: Tucson, AZ

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by desertcat » 2019/11/25 07:25:39

aussie wrote:
2019/11/24 03:47:22
Hi Desertcat,

I setup the disc configuration in Centos 6. I made /boot and swap a standard partition and LVM everything else. I made /boot and swap a standard partition because they require contiguous disc space. LVM does not guarantee contiguous space, in fact my backup partition is spread across two discs. In Centos 6 you could mix and match standard partitions and LVM partitions, but in Centos 7 you have to chose one or the other for everything. The problem I had was when you select swap it set the space to zero and will not let you specify a size. You have to delete swap and add it in again. This is why I selected a standard partition to allocate new space. I didn't have any available space in LVM. So I had a mix and match of standard partitions and LVM in Centos 7. Maybe this messed up their new algorithm.

Aussie
Ahhhh!!! That does explain everything. I *personally* don't like LVM -- it has some pluses and some minuses -- and I use strictly a Classic Partitioning scheme, and no LVM, but my buddy does. I do remember the last time I installed CentOS 7 (on my test bed an ancient HP x-workstation built circa 2010 that ran Windows 7 that I "Rescued" from the side of a dumpster and was totally dead, which I then rebuilt) that during the install process you could choose LVM, plus it allowed you to add classic partitions that could have a classic Ext4 FS.

When I was rebuilding jaguar I encountered all sorts of problems so when my 3rd HDD died I bought a NEW 500GB HDD (max spec on that ancient machine) but decided to "experiment" first and did a down and dirty install with LVM, but I also split out /boot, /home, /, and SWAP as Classic Partitions with EXT4 FS and then let LVM decide what it wanted to do with everything else. It worked. Once I had played around with it for some time and really got Jaguar up and running with no hiccups ( had a lot of those as I rebuilt the machine literally from the ground up and changed from a dual core to a quad core, upped the memory from 1GB to 6GB, and installed the NEW 500 HDD... essentially maxed out to spec) I then removed the HDD and totally reformatted the drive, I then proceeded to a fresh install only this time using a Classic Partitioning Scheme, prior to that the machine was more proof of concept as all I needed was an OS. I did not want to spend a lot of time in case the machine failed (which it did over and over), until I had it running reliably.

I noticed that you said that this is a LAPTOP, but also noticed you said you have 2 drives (?!?) inside the laptop!?!? What happens if one of the drives DIES?!? How HARD (or easy ) is it to remove the bad drive and install a NEW drive. My buddy and I rebuilt a Laptop built about 2010 and in order to remove the OLD DRIVE and install a NEW DRIVE it required that we take the thing almost down to the frame to access the drive; OTOH some of the NEWER Laptops he says are quite easy to swap out or replace drives. Is yours one of the former or the latter?!? If the latter why not consider buying a new 1TB SSD which today -- amazingly -- can now be bought for ~$100 or less and do a NEW Install with CentOS 7.7? Once you install the new SSD simply copy any major data files over to the new drive. Major sure you can access the data, then reformat the old drive, and make it strictly for backup. Indeed I bought a 2TB HDD for something like $60 a few years back which I formatted it as just one big ugly partition with a XFS file system. The ONLY thing it is for is backups. BTW IF you go to a strict Classic Partitioning Scheme, or a mixed LVM + Classic Partition scheme be sure to allocate more than enough space for each Classic Partition you use. Ex. for /home I would allocate on a 1TB drive no less than 150-200 GB. My problem with LVM is that it gobbles up the space until it runs out of space and you wonder where it all went, this is especially true with /var/log files. GDM is notorious for gobbling up space because of the AUDIT files. If you can install lightdm that should help a lot.

If the former where you can't easily access the drives, have you thought of copying all you data and backup files to an external drive and then once completed simply reformat the two drives using something like gparted and then do a fresh install with CentOS 7?!? Once that has been accomplished copy back your data and backup files to the freshly reformatted drive/s with its new CentOS 7.7 OS. One advantage of doing this all the data that you restore should be in contiguous sectors thus should be faster to access. This is more-or-less the philosophy behind MS-DOS "defrag" program.

Any rate hope this gives you some ideas of things that you could try. There is no doubt in my mind that your laptop should easily run CentOS 7.7.

aussie
Posts: 101
Joined: 2018/06/30 12:21:31

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by aussie » 2019/12/05 09:29:04

Hello,

I made another attempt to install Centos 7.7 on my laptop with the same results as my first post. This is what I did differently.

My thinking was that the problem was because of the mix and match of LVM and standard partitions, so I reduced the size of LVM root partition by 20GiB and and allocated that 20GiB to LVM swap.

I tried to do this is Centos 7.7 partition screens but had problems. I deleted the root partition and added swap okay, but when trying to add back the root partition it kept trying to add another LVM volume (centos-laptop) which that zero size. I would change this to vggroup00 and specify the size and do and update. But it keep trying to give me centos-laptop volume it has created. It said there was enough space in the vggroup00 for the root partition, but it just wouldn't accept it. I finally installed Centos 6.10 and did the partitioning there with no problems and then installed Centos 7.7. But no luck, still the same problem as the first post.

I have reinstalled Centos 6.10. I will leave the laptop on Centos 6 until I replace the laptop or perhaps try a different distribution of linux.

Aussie

aussie
Posts: 101
Joined: 2018/06/30 12:21:31

Re: Laptop install of Centos 7 failed

Post by aussie » 2020/04/15 09:17:34

Hello,

I would like to try another install with Centos 7.8. If I get the same problem as the first post (the installs works, but can't login) is there any log files or such that I can print out in rescue mode that would help in debugging this problem?

BTW: I'm able to login fine in vmware virtual machine, so it is something with the running on the actual hardware.

Aussie

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