[Sussex] Centos 6 64bit no longer bootable

[Brendan Whelan]

Hi Jan, John,  Thanks for your responses. The server is a Dell PowerEdge 
SC440 and is definitely a 64bit machine. I installed Centos 6.3 and 
updated to 6.4 and the system then ran for a couple of weeks. The only 
recent system change I made was to change the login background PNG 
image. I have put the disk that won't boot on one side and am rebuilding 
the system on a different drive but in the same server. When that is 
complete I will re-change the background PNG and see if that cause the 
problem.
Brendan

On 29/09/2013 11:31, Jan Henkins wrote:
> Hello Brendan,
>
> On 27/09/13 15:54, Brendan Whelan wrote:
>> I have just built a Centos 6.4 64-bit system on a, relatively old, 
>> Dell server. Having got through the installation of the operating 
>> system and configured our package, I changed the default screen 
>> backgrounds to those used on other servers. I logged out but the 
>> screen just ( from memory) showed a white line and the word "Centos". 
>> I therefore powered off and back on again but now get the message 
>> "ata_id DHIO_GET_IDENTITY failed for /dev/sda" it then goes into a 
>> kernel panic. Searching on the Internet indicates that this could be 
>> a disk controller issue.  However I can boot, using a DVD, into 
>> recovery mode and, for example, check that the png background files 
>> are in place. ( Just in case there was a bad connection I re-bedded 
>> cables, boards, etc. )
>
> Could you please let us know the model of the server?
>
>> Is it likely to be a hardware issue and are there any tests that I 
>> can perform? As it is a new installation I am not concerned about the 
>> data or files but would like to get the system working.
>
> Try a minimal CentOS 5.9 installation, and see if that works. Once you 
> have that tested and we know the outcome, we can have a head-scratch 
> and figure out some possible next steps.
>