From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040413 Debian/1.6-5 Description of problem: When attempting to install with Fedora Core 2 test3 on a Dual Opteron 248 w/ 8GB memory, I get random failures. Reducing total memory to 4GB works consistantly, but isn't the desired solution. Motherboard: Tyan K8W (S2885) Processors: 2 x Opteron 248 Memory: 8 x 1GB BIOS version: 1.02 (2-3-2004 - latest available) SCSI card: Adaptec 29320 The most often boot error (~20% of the time) is: ... RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0 crc error VFS: Cannot open root device "<NULL>" or unknown-block(3,2) Please append a correct "root=" boot option Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,2) However, sometimes the system will appear to boot fine with a single warning that shows up: ... RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0 VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem). ... VFS: Can't find ext2 filesystem on dev loop0 ... I've tested both groups of 4GB ram alone in the system without any problems, but having the full 8GB gets the problem to show up most of the time. I also have a duplicate system that also experiences the same exact problem. I'm going to attach a few dmesg outputs, /proc/cpuinfo, and /proc/meminfo files to this report. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.5-1.327-BOOT How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Try to boot Fedora Core 2 test3 on a dual-opteron 248 system with a Tyan K8W (S2885) motherboard and 8GB of ram in 8 1GB sticks. Actual Results: Couldn't boot into the installer. Expected Results: Being able to boot the system and have it recognize all 8GB ram without any problems. Additional info:
Created attachment 99745 [details] Output of /proc/cpuinfo
Created attachment 99746 [details] Output of /proc/meminfo with 8GB in machine
Created attachment 99747 [details] Output of /proc/meminfo with 4GB in machine
Created attachment 99748 [details] dmesg output with 8GB in machine
Created attachment 99749 [details] dmesg output with 4GB in machine
Created attachment 99750 [details] Output of uname -a
The frequency is more like 80%, not 20%. It only boots successfully 20% of the time, and I while I doubt it would complete an install during that 20%, I haven't tried yet.
Just tested on a Riowork Arima HDAMA board with dual 246s and 8GB ram, and everything worked smoothly. However, I still have to get the Tyan board working if I can. But this shows that it's not related to the SCSI card, and x86_64 fedora can handle 8GB ram.
Adding "maxcpus=0" to the bootloader options allows me to boot the machines consistantly w/ 8GB ram, but then only one cpu works...
Bad memory on one machine and bad memory sockets on the other were causing the problem. memtest86 3.1a was very helpful in figuring this out. Although there is a problem with earlier 2.4 kernels (for example, SuSE 9 needed you to get a new kernel before working with two CPUs), the 2.6.5 kernel in core2test3 works fine.