Comment 57 for bug 37452

After much hairpulling and reading, here is my workarround. Hope this helps someone

Ubuntu 6.06 install on Dell Poweredge 860 with 2.6.17-10 kernel

There is a problem with the SAS controller configured in RAID 1 with the kernel (2.6.15-26-386) that is used for the installation process. It is unable to see the RAID configured drives and “hangs” when trying to start partman to begin the partitioning process. In addition the kernel which will be installed by the normal installation process is also unable to access to see the drives in this configuration resulting in a indefinite wait after the “booting the kernel” message.
Workaround
• Remove the primary raid hard disk from the server and install it in a non raid machine.
• Start the server installation and install like you normally would (make sure the last partition is swap!)
• Before the installation wants to reboot, go to a console (ctrl + alt +F2 ).
• Copy a working kernel .deb package (http://packages.ubuntu.com/edgy/base/linux-image-2.6.17-10-server) on a usb stick and place it in the chroot environment (/target)
• Chroot to this environment
chroot /target
• and install the package
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.17-10-server
• Make sure that the network interfaces that are used by the server are in /etc/network/interfaces. If there is only one interface listed while the target machine has two, none will work (maybe only in case they use the same driver)
• Shutdown the temp machine and place the disk back in the server

When the server boots go in to the SAS configuration and select synchronize disks in the RAID properties menu. (This will take quite a while…)

When the server boots, it will probably display an I/O error on sda5 (or the last partition number you use) if you used a normal installation this partition will be the swap partition. I suspect that by re-synchronizing the array some of the last sectors of the drive are no longer available.
The assumption is made that this partition is the swap partition in the following use caution and watch out and be careful and use at your own risk and so on and so on

• Deactivate the swap partition
swapoff /dev/sda? # replace by your partition number
• Use fdisk to delete the swap partition and the extended partition which is created by a standard install
• Recreate the partitions (they will be slightly smaller this time)
• Format the new partition
mkfs -c /dev/sda? # replace by your partition number
Reactivate the swap
mkswap /dev/sda? # replace by your partition number
swapon /dev/sda? # replace by your partition number

Done.