F23 Server - "Unknown Error" During Installation - DeviceTreeError?

[sbcelicagt]

Background: I'm totally new to linux and my end goal is to get an Amahi 9 based home server setup (which requires Fedora 23 Server to be installed first). I had previous success with an older set of hardware that I used as a trial run before investing in new hardware and additional storage. The new hardware setup consists of an AMD A88X based system (Asrock FM2A88M +Pro3 and AMD APU) and I re-used 2 of the old SATA hard drives by pairing them up with the UEFI AMD hardware RAID (1) process.

To make sure the RAID drives were set up correctly, I mock-installed Windows 10 up to the point of choosing a hard drive location. After using a separate USB flash drive to load the AMD RAID drivers, everything appeared to work fine.

Which brings me to the F23 Server installation process. With the hard drives plugged in, the installation process crashes right after the language menu GUI pops up indicating an "Unknown Error" has occurred. I tried out the bug submittal process:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1297624#c20

reason: blivet.errors.DeviceTreeError: failed to add slave viaccbhhiciad of device viaccbhhiciad1

What does that mean? Not sure how to troubleshoot at this point. I tried both the UEFI and BIOS boot versions of my Fedora Media Writer based flash drive. I tried both the Net Install and full versions of the F23 Server ISO.

 

[Alabalcho]

Installing OS (being it Windows, Linux etc) on proprietary RAID is always a source of problems. I would get small drive for OS root, then start with looking at drivers issues.

 

[sbcelicagt]

Installing OS (being it Windows, Linux etc) on proprietary RAID is always a source of problems. I would get small drive for OS root, then start with looking at drivers issues.

Thanks for the reply. To absolutely confirm it was a conflict with the AMD RAID controller, I changed the UEFI setting for storage back to AHCI and the Fedora installer doesn't appear to be angry anymore.

I had luck using the RAID controller on my (very) old setup so I was just kind of assuming all would be well this round. I guess not!

Looks like have to come up with a new storage scheme, but that's a topic for a different thread.

EDIT: I spoke too soon. After plugging in a few combinations, it looks like the old hard drives for some reason are causing trouble with the Fedora installer.

EDIT 2: I found the root cause of the problem. The 2 old drives were previously setup in a RAID configuration on the old motherboard. Somehow it carried that information over to the new setup and made a mess of trying to setup the AMD RAID. I used a Windows10 install disk (USB flash) to run 'diskpart' to clear out the old information before trying again to create a new array.

Good news: It appeared to work and I no longer get the fatal error from the installation GUI.

Bad news: The installation GUI appears to recognize both drives as independent entities (sda1 & sdb1)

(Mostly just a learning exercise at this point as I'm going to remove the array and go back to AHCI to continue installation. The general consensus from the Internet appears to be that unless you've got an expensive add-on RAID controller, using virtual RAID by way of motherboard firmware or OS software is a bit of a crapshoot anyway.)

 

[randomizer]

Have you tried a later version of Fedora? I don't know if it will help with the problem you're having, but as Fedora 23 is no longer supported you'll have an obsolete OS even if you manage to get this working.

 

[skittle]

Just use mdraid much Superior to any fake motherboard raid MF in someways Superior to hardware raid too