Bug 123530 - Install hangs on /sbin/loader when installing on a Dell Inspiron 3200 Laptop
Summary: Install hangs on /sbin/loader when installing on a Dell Inspiron 3200 Laptop
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: anaconda
Version: 2
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Jeremy Katz
QA Contact: Mike McLean
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2004-05-19 04:47 UTC by Adam Browning
Modified: 2007-11-30 22:10 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2004-06-21 23:05:13 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Adam Browning 2004-05-19 04:47:02 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6)
Gecko/20040207 Firefox/0.8

Description of problem:
When running the install program on a Dell Inspiron 3200 laptop, it
gets to the point where it says "running /sbin/loader".  It seems the
hang, then the CD starts spining and does not stop and nothing
happens.  This laptop was able to install FC1 before.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot laptop with FC2 CD 1
2. Select either graphical or text install
3. CD spins up at /sbin/loader and continues to spin until hard reset
    

Actual Results:  The laptop stalls at the /sbin/loader line, the CD
continues to spin, and nothing happens.  Laptop must be reset.

Expected Results:  Typical graphical installer

Additional info:

This laptop has a PII 266MHz CPU, 96MB of RAM, and a 6GB hard drive.

Comment 1 Jeremy Katz 2004-05-20 02:11:17 UTC
Does booting with 'linux nousb' help?

Comment 2 Joe Orton 2004-05-28 12:52:28 UTC
*** Bug 112742 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3 Joe Orton 2004-05-28 12:53:54 UTC
Bad dup, sorry.

Comment 4 Jeremy Katz 2004-06-21 23:05:13 UTC
Closing due to inactivity.  Please reopen if you have further information to add
to this bug report.

Comment 5 Jeremy Katz 2004-06-21 23:10:37 UTC
Closing due to inactivity.  Please reopen if you have further information to add
to this bug report.

Comment 6 Phil B. 2004-06-24 13:29:34 UTC
Can you re-open this bug.  I'm having the very same problem on 
similar hardware.  The problem that I'm seeing (using ALT-F4) is that 
it fails to mount the CD-ROM drive.  The error message indicates that 
the IRQ is lost.  It loops this way infinitely.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 3000
200MHz CPU, 144 MB RAM, 3.2GB HD, IDE CD-ROM

Comment 7 Phil B. 2004-06-24 13:50:36 UTC
I noticed in the system messages that it looks to load the IDE-CDROM 
module but FAILS to find it.

Comment 8 Richard 2004-08-27 02:35:18 UTC
I have same problem on Dell Inspiron 3200.  Please reopen.  I have
tried noprobe, nofb, nopcmcia, nousb, mem=144M (yes thats how much mem
I have) , and text.

Comment 9 Tim Chilton 2005-01-23 00:42:13 UTC
Spent a lot of time looking at this today and have a solution.

Machine is an old Dell Latitude CP P233 MMX (for a firewall project), 
latest Dell BIOS A16

Install of RH9 works fine, Fedora FC3 hangs on sbin/loader as 
detailed above. When problem exists, tty3 (or 4?) shows "dma 
interrupt recovery" and "lost interrupt" messages on /dev/hdc which 
is the CDROM (a Toshiba XM1902B)

Install will work if you install with "linux ide=nodma"

After the install completes you can change the /etc/grub.conf to take 
out the ide=nodma and add a hdparm -d0 /dev/hdc to /etc/rc.local so 
that the CDROM does not use DMA but the hard disk does (for speed on 
the HDD)

Suggestion : If the installer starts getting lost interrupts, why 
can't it revert from DMA mode to PIO mode, that way it won't crash. 

Dont forget that many ex-Windows PC's had problems with DMA support 
on IDE too which is why most Win installs didn't use DMA mode unless 
you forced it. 


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