[Sussex] Centos 6 64bit no longer bootable

[Dave Garry]

I was going to say something similar to what Paul said - you mentioned
being able to boot from DVD into rescue mode - from there you can
run this to examine the smart data:

smartctl -a /dev/sda

Does this show a healthy, or failing drive ?

Dave

On 30/09/13 16:46, Paul Willis wrote:
> Do you have a disk utility that will read the SMART data for your hard
> disk? Maybe you could find a text based way of reading it (to use from
> your live dvd if it doesn't have something handy built in). Was the
> machine hot when it died?
>
> Paul
>
> On 30 September 2013 11:31, Brendan Whelan <b_whelan at mistral.co.uk> wrote:
>> 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.
>>>
>>
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