From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT) Description of problem: installed Win NI 4.0 sp6 (host) and VMWare 2.0 on a latitude w/6 gig hdd, 128Mb RAM. When instlalling redhat 7.1 as a guest on a virtual/real partition (doesn't matter if booting text or gui or expert), 7.1 hangs (locks up) at "running sbin/loader". The CDROM is labled F:. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. install win NT/2K 2. install VMWare 3. create a guest profile for a linux on a virtual disk or "raw partition" 4. power on guest 5. hit pf2 to change the boot to cdrom, save and exit setup 6. when linux boot menu appears select gui, text or expert. Actual Results: In the log for VMWare guest os, there are messages: ATAPI_CDROM: MODE SENSE (ALMOST) COMPLETELY EMULATED ATAPI_CDROM: MODE SENSE PACKET 0x5a 0x0 0x2a 0x0 0x0 0x0 x0x 0x0 0x18 0x0 0x0 ATAPI_CDROM: UNKNOWN COMMAND 0x51 AIO THREAD 0x3b PANIC WINNT_CDROM: SETFILEPOINTER() FOR F: failed 0X83 AIO_WAIT: IN PANIC AIO_WAIT: IN PANIC AIO_WAIT: IN PANIC MSG_POST ERROR MSG.LOG.PANIC Expected Results: redhat linux 7.1 should have started the installation setup Additional info: check out http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/6164 or search for "VMWare install OR installation) linux sbin loader(hang OR hangs OR boot)" on google.com you will see an number of people who have the same problem. one suggested that you had to put cdrom.sychronous = true in the vmware profile for the linux guest and download kernel 2.4.3- 12. however how do you install the new kernel and or fixes without the 7.1 kernal installed anywhere?
Feel free to report this bug to vmware or microsoft. This is not a bug in Red Hat Linux.
This problem has already been to VMWare. If you had done your homework instead you would have known that. I have given you what symptoms you should need and given you the last messages in the trace log. I am a former level 1, 2 and 3 OS support tech and I am not pleased with your response. This is what I found under http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/4639, maybe you should study it before making pronouncements that there is no problem, especially when this is happening on more than just one laptop and not only under VMWare. Also look at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=bd95cf3b5b74d8607a3501fd75a84452&threadid=1058&highlight=sbin%2Floader and at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=bd95cf3b5b74d8607a3501fd75a84452&threadid=727&highlight=sbin%2Floader. I should not have to do your research. eddied Newbie Registered: Jul 2001 Location: Distribution: Posts: 2 Just received an answer from VMWare on this one Lockups During the Install of Red Hat Linux 7.1 in a virtual machine. SYMPTOM: Client tries to load Red Hat 7.1 in a virtual machine, after running other virtual machines successfully. Red Hat 7.1 locks up the virtual machine during the install at "running sbin/loader" and will continue no further. PROBLEM: VMware has identified and confirmed that there is a bug in Linux Kernel 2.4.2 (which is used for the install of RH 7.1) which causes lockups due to timing problems. VMware(TM) Workstation virtual machines are affected by this bug. This occurs on both Windows and Linux host machines. Extensive testing and work have been done on this problem, and the kernel bug has been confirmed with Linux kernel developers. SOLUTION: We've empirically determined that the lock-up occurs much less frequently with a setting change in the virtual machine configuration file. As a convenience to our customers, we have confirmed that the following workaround will allow you to get RH 7.1 installed. PLEASE FOLLOW ALL STEPS in these instructions; the configuration change SHOULD NOT be left in your virtual machine's configuration permanently, or other problems may occur. Here is the workaround: 1. Before starting the RH 7.1 installer, add the following line anywhere in your virtual machine's configuration (CFG or VMX) file: cdrom.synchronous=TRUE 2. Start the RH install, confirm that you get past the lockup point, and install RH the rest of the way. 3. After RH 7.1 is installed correctly, and networking configured, download and install the latest Linux kernel (2.4.3-12) from Red Hat Update, or from Red Hat's web site: http://www.redhat.com 4. Power off the VM 5. FIND AND REMOVE the following line from your virtual machine's configuration (CFG or VMX): cdrom.synchronous=TRUE 6. Save changes to the configuration file, and reboot your VM with the new kernel. Red hat 7.1 should work fine within the virtual machine now.
VMWare never ever contacted nor informed us about any problems; nor have "confirmed" this with us or the kernel developers on the linux kernel mailinglist. As this problem only occurs with the VMWare virtual machine and not with real hardware, pointing the finger to the emulation is quite reasonable in my opinion.
Here is an example of the problem without installing as a VMWare host. ho_chi_minh Newbie Registered: Jul 2001 Location: Distribution: Posts: 2 Similar problem here with installation of Redhat v7.1 I am booting from floppy or from cdrom. Tried all options from GUI install, expert install, text install. In each case the hardware detection lines fly by the screen until the process comes to /sbin/loader This is where is stalls. In the GUI case this simply ends up as a blue screen. After some time, the process turns to anaconda, and reports an error 11 back, shuts down the various loaded system components. I can imagine this to be a hardware problem. I've tried to install 7.1 on an AMD Thunderbird with ASUS board and 512 M RAM I also tried an older ASUS board with Pentium 200. Same result. No clue what is causing this RedHat blue screen of death... but it looks like a RedHat install bug, or a video card related bug perhaps. I am using an ATI all-in-wonder, the other system is a Matrox Millenium video card. Well, hope this info can be of use to someone and help resolve it. If I find out more, I'll post it. Ho Chi Minh
That's a totally different bug where this guy's IDE CDROM drive doesn't support UDMA properly; there is a (long) list of cdrom drives that pretent to support UDMA but don't; we added a "ide=nodma" commandline option to work around the drives that were not yet on the blacklist.
You don't seem to understand I am getting the 'running/sbin/loader' problem and when I check with the VMWare log (see above) that is what I find. I have already check with VMWare support my self and did not find any problem reported with them. VMWare panicked because of the hang condition.
vmware is not something we support