Bug 716

Summary:	bootable CD-ROM hangs system if no floppy drive present
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	matt.brown
Component:	installer	Assignee:	Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	5.2
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	1999-01-07 22:36:56 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description matt.brown 1999-01-06 19:58:20 UTC

(I think this is a bug!)

With my PowerEdge2300 I cannot boot from the RedHat 5.2
CDROM unless my floppy drive is installed and enabled. I'm
not booting from floppy and there is no diskette in the
drive. The system hangs just after it "discovers" the
bootable media in the cdrom drive. Normally, the system
would continue discovering devices on my other SCSI bus
after discovering the bootable media. With the floppy (and
no diskette in the drive!) I boot fine. Without the floppy I
hang.

I've tried enabling/disabling floppy controller in the CMOS
setup.

The bootable WinNT cdrom does not hang the system with or
without the floppy. It gets booted up and starts installing.
(I tried the WinNT cdrom to try to isolate the problem to
RedHat or my hardware. I do not dual-boot WinNT. This
machine is exclusively Linux.)

This is not a severe problem-I removed the floppy drive,
which I don't need, to make room for a Zip drive. I now have
the floppy mounted internally as a workaround.

Comment 1 David Lawrence 1999-01-06 21:59:59 UTC

This has been assigned to our hardware certification person for
further review.

Comment 2 Doug Ledford 1999-01-07 22:36:59 UTC

The problem is not actually a Red Hat 5.2 problem.  It has been
confirmed from Dell and Adaptec that the problem is a BIOS bug.
Specifically, when the Adaptec BIOS attempts to move Drive A to Drive
B and no Drive A exists, then it crashes the machine.  The Windows NT
CD-ROM does not cause this problem because it uses the Torino CD-ROM
extension for booting instead of the emulated floppy extension that
Red Hat uses.

No new BIOS has been made for the machine at this time, and the
current solution is that once the system is installed, don't boot from
the Red Hat 5.2 CD-ROM and you can do what-ever you wish with the
floppy.  If you must be able to boot from CD-ROM that uses the floppy
style boot extension, then further action will be needed.  In either
case, it isn't really a Red Hat problem, it specifically is a Dell
problem, so this trouble ticket will be closed out.