Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 51119
System lockup just after 'Configuring Kernel Parameters' possibly due to 'poweroff' command
Last modified: 2008-08-01 12:22:51 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT) Description of problem: Immediately after the system prints the line "Configuring Kernel Parameters [OK]" on startup the system locks up and becomes completely unresponsive with no error messages. Keyboard LEDs do not respond either. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Install Linux 2.Use poweroff at end of any session as normal 3.He's dead, Jim Actual Results: System powers off as it should, but becomes as described above in description at next bootup. Expected Results: PC should power off. Additional info: I have done my best to find the cause of the problem, and I am fairly sure it is the poweroff command. Every time I run this command the system is unbootable afterwards. Attempts to use emergency recovery mode show nothing obviously amiss. Apologies if I have not reported this for the correct module, but this one sounded closest. If there are any logs or further descriptions you would like, please let me know.
Further testing shows that the keyboard is locked up immediately after boot messages start filling the screen, not when the kernel parameter message comes up. This evening I have observed this lockup happening on installs of 7.1 and 7 straight on first reboot, so it would seem that the poweroff routine's are not at fault. It did once get to the Configuring... stage, the system stopped as 'normal' but the keyboard remained active. No input made a difference until I hit control-c, when the boot up procedure ended and the system started to shut down. It continued to shut down until it tried to save the time settings to the hardware clock, and then it locked up again. No keyboard input made any difference after that.
This sounds like a kernel problem of some sort.
Are these "warm" or "cold" boots ? (I mean "cold" as in "I unplugged the powercord for at least 10 seconds")
I have now fixed (or worked around, really) the problem, so I don't know if you're still interested in looking into this. A Linux user at work suggested to me that it might be an incompatibility with the way APM is implemented in my motherboard, so I restored all the motherboard parameters to their defaults (can be done in software on my board) and hey presto the problem is gone. I don't really know what this means, and I'd be happier if I had some kind of definite resolution, but it is now working correctly. And to answer your question, the problem was occuring from all kinds of reboots, from resets to cold boots after a night of being off. Thanks.
I get this problem too, but only from a cold boot. I have a dual boot with Windows 2000 & Red Hat 7.0. If I try to cold boot into Linux it halts after "Configuring Kernel Parameters [OK]". I have to boot Windows first then restart to get into Linux. System information : MB : ASUS A7A266 CPU : AMD Athlon 1.4GHz Graphics : nVIDIA GeForce3 The machine came with Windows ME (yuck!) installed and I've already had to change the BIOS setting "PnP OS" from yes to no. Maybe there is some other BIOS setting that is good for Windows 9x only?
I have a system with a similar problem. It is an AST Century City which is a legacy-free (USB, VGA, and analog audio only) box with an Intel-brand motherboard, PIII/500, 128 MB RAM, and a 13 GB IDE HDD. After installing RedHat 7.1, the first reboot after installation hung during the Interactive Startup phase-- I got:<p> Welcome to Red Hat Linux<br> Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.<br> Mounting proc filesystem: [ OK ]<br> Configuring kernel parameters: [ OK ]<p> and there it stays for as long as I let it. The keyboard does not respond to ctrl-alt-del, nor do numlock/capslock lights work if I hit those buttons. The exact same thing happens on every cold boot without exception. If I boot to Windows, then restart (aka warm boot) Linux comes up fine, and once in Linux, I can enter 'reboot' at the command line and it will come back into Linux. Only 1 or 2 warm boots have failed in the couple days I've been testing the system. I first installed Linux on this machine as the only OS on a different HDD and had this exact same problem. I then put my win98 drive (luckily pre-partitioned) back in, put linux on what used to be D:, and that's where I am now. Until a fix comes along, I'm going to set it to boot to DOS which will have LOADLIN listed in its AUTOEXEC.BAT. I may also try RH 6.2 on the HD I used earlier. If I do, I'll post the results here.
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem persists. The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/