recover from a bad F16 install

[Paul Allen Newell]

On 3/19/2012 6:54 AM, William Hooper wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 9:40 PM, Paul Allen Newell<pnewell at cs.cmu.edu>  wrote:
>> I now have a machine that is "a brick". There is no operating system on it
>> as that got destroyed and any attempts to do a fresh install come back with
>> "No usable disks have been found" and I can't make any progress. Nothing
>> could be done in the troubleshoot options except get a dmesg, which I have
>> attached to this email.
> I don't believe anyone has suggested it, but are your sure your hard
> drive is still functioning?  The file you attached doesn't detect any
> hard disks, just two optical drives:
>
> [    2.245311] ata2.00: ATAPI: ATAPI   DVD A  DH20A4H, QP53, max UDMA/66
> [    2.245321] ata2.01: ATAPI: HL-DT-ST CD-ROM GCR-8480B, 1.03, max MWDMA2
> [    2.245327] ata2.00: limited to UDMA/33 due to 40-wire cable
> [    2.267187] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
> [    2.289186] ata2.01: configured for MWDMA2
> [    2.292540] scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM            ATAPI    DVD A  DH20A4H
>    QP53 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
> [    2.295848] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 47x/125x writer dvd-ram cd/rw
> xa/form2 cdda tray
> [    2.295853] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
> [    2.296064] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
> [    2.296192] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 5
> [    2.297320] scsi 1:0:1:0: CD-ROM            HL-DT-ST CD-ROM
> GCR-8480B 1.03 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
> [    2.300388] sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
> [    2.300567] sr 1:0:1:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
> [    2.300695] sr 1:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5
>
>

William:

Thanks for reply. Nobody has suggested it and I think the only mention 
might have been my comment about "amazing timing" if it was a hardware 
failure at the exact time of the install / partition. I appreciate your 
pointing this out!

Your email reminded me that I think I have a CD from HP for diagnostics 
on the xw8000 (its been a long time since I needed it -- over a decade), 
so I will see if I can find it and see if it shows any more light on 
what is happening.

I spent yesterday reading up about partitioning et al and hopefully will 
get the courage to try playing with the "brick" today.

Paul