Asus P5QL Pro Nightmare

[Rashkae]

Rick Bragg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a brand new Asus P5QL Pro, and I have been trying to get it
> running with ubuntu-8.10-desktop-amd64 and there are very strange
> problems.  It seems I can NEVER reboot the from the Ubuntu CD 2 times in
> a row, but if I wait a few hours after shutting down, then I can reboot
> with the CD!  No changes at all, just wait a few hours!  Also, I want to
> use a (software) raid 10 array as my main disk.  So I use cfdisk to
> create a single partition with the FD type for each of my 4 disks, then
> I install mdadm, and as soon as I try to create the array with the
> command "mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=10
> --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1" it says that
> "mdadm: another array by this name is already running"!  How could this
> be already running?!? I booted from the CD!  It seems I can't create a
> raid array at all. and it can never reboot without waiting for hours
> unplugged.  This makes no sense at all.
> 
> Any Clues?
> 
> Thanks
> Rick
> 
> 
> 
> 

You have some seriously mis-behaving hardware there somewhere.

You can speed up that reboot problem by discharging the power to
motherboard and devices.  Shut down the computer.  Turn off physical
power (either from the switch on your power supply itself, or if your
power supply is one of those that tries to skimp 10c on a switch, unplug
it) press the power button on PC, you should see the LED flash on for
half a second before it dies.  At that point, the power still residual
in the Capacitors should be spent and you should be able to re-power the
computer and the misbehaving chip, whether it be on Mobo or some other
device, should reboot.


Most boot cd's will rebuild raid arrays.  That's usually considered a
good thing for boot cd's to do.  Try cat /proc/mdstat to see which
arrays are active and what devices they consist of.