Verifying DMI pool data...forever

[sluthy]

Setting up my new home server:

Gigabyte G33-S2-DS2R
4 x WD 320GB HDDs (for RAID5 storage)
1 x CF-to-IDE adapter, straight into IDE port (for Linux system)
1 x Pioneer DVD burner
etc

Plugged it all in, CF adapter comes up on IDE channel 4 master (unusual? Relevant?), booted from CD fine, installed SuSE 10.3 on 2GB CF drive (took over 2 hours??), booted onto it straight away and logged in successfully, then I shut down.

Took out the CD, configured the four SATA drives to operate as RAID (instead of IDE/AHCI), then using RAID Configuration Utility set them up as a single RAID5 volume called SHARED. Currently empty/unformatted.

Now, when I boot, I get to the apparently famous "Verifying DMI pool data..." line and hangs. The HDD indicators say it's accessing the CF card constantly but doesn't seem to be doing anything.

I'm certain the install went fine, so would the problem be the newly setup RAID? It still boots on the CD perfectly, just not the CF card.

 

[amdskip]

So couldn't you unhook the raid setup and see if it boots?

 

[sluthy]

I will when I get home, I just wanted to get any other ideas to try while doing it, if there were any other BIOS settings or likewise to investigate.

 

[sluthy]

After taking the SATA RAID out, just got "NO BOOT, PLEASE INSER DISK AND ENTER" or something similar. Started up on Ubuntu 7.10 CD (first one was corrupt disk, second burn works fine), wiped the CF and installed Ubuntu onto it, tried again, "Missing Operating System". Tried booting it in a card reader as a USB HDD, verifying DMI pool data forever.

One site suggests the Missing Operating System could be related to a lack of bootloader. The first time I installed Ubuntu, I ticked "No" for a bootloader and got that error, the second time I ticked "Yes" and left it at its default location "dev/hd0". Didn't work either. I do know that the computer sees the CF as /dev/sda, should I set that as the location?

 

[sluthy]

When reinstalling SUSE I specified a /boot partition as well as the root (/), and it worked. Delicious. Now I'm slowly sorting through the mire of Samba and Apache trying to install printers/shares and stuff. Thanks to all anyway.