Components: - VMware ESX build 16390 (latest version on 2005-10-16) - running on a HP Proliant Server P3 host with single CPU w/ SCSI disk - RHEL 4 Update 2 iso files. When booting a guest machine with the Update 2 iso file the kernel crash while loading one of the SCSI module. If a guest machine is installed with Update 1 it work fine until it's up2date'd to match "Update 2" package versions and kernel upgraded to 2.6.9-22.EL. It crashed at next reboot and require a fall back to 2.6.9-11.EL kernel. I found this message on nahant-beta-list that look like my problem: https://www.redhat.com/archives/nahant-beta-list/2005-August/msg00009.html Someone else seem to had reproduce this problem before with Update 2-beta.
I am investigating the nahant-beta-list posting to see what became of it. In the meantime, please post the console messages that print when the system crashes.
I found out about this bug today the hard way. Last section of console screen before VM poweroff: "Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel. PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 4 of device 0000:00:07.1 Red Hat nash version 4.2.1.6 starting sda: assuming drive cache: write through" System boots fine going back to 2.6.9-11.
There is more detail of this problem on the vmware forums. It seems that the latest mptscsi driver does a target reset on unused targets. The real hardware doesn't support this, and the vmware emulation dies when this happens. There is also a patch on the vmware forums that fixes this, it would be nice for that to get into the distribution kernels. See http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=306923 for more details!
We should have something like that already. Could you try this kernel? http://people.redhat.com/~jbaron/rhel4/RPMS.kernel/ These are experimental kernels.
Thanks, I've tried the smp version of that kernel and it seems to work fine. I take it kernels like these will end up in the next update?
Thanks for testing. Yeah, U3.
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information on the solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report if the solution does not work for you. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2006-0132.html