Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 53691
anaconda starts in textmode on a by X supported system and freezes after formating partitions
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:37:08 EDT
Description of Problem: When booting from the first CD anaconda starts without error message on console 3 or 4 into textmode. The second problem is that it freezes after formating the partitions. How Reproducible: It occours everytime on my systems hardware configuration Steps to Reproduce: Simply try to install RedHat Linux on a Machine matching my configuration. Actual Results: Linux is not installable Expected Results: Linux should be installable, shouldn't it? ;) Additional Information: RedHat 7.0 was once installable on the same machine it now fails. The only three things that could have changed since the are: 1. My partitions 2. Added a second HDD 3. Updated my BIOS to version F8 My Hardware: HDD1: 16.473MB Maxtore, HDD2: 39.087MB Fujitsu, Graphic card: 3dfx VoodooIII 3000 AGP, RAM: 128MB (2x 64MB), Motherboard: Gigabyte GA- 7IXE4, Processor: AMD Duron 800 My Partitions: HDD1: [active; primary; 7,8MB; ext2fs; /boot], [-; primary; 6.000,8MB; FAT32; - ], [-; logical; 6.957,8MB; ext2fs; /], [-; logical; 3.506,3MB; FAT32; -] HDD2: [-; primary; 20.002,8MB; FAT32; -], [-; logical; 18.583,0MB; FAT32; -], [- ; logical; 502,0MB; SWAP; SWAP]
*** Bug 53690 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
When in the installer, try going to F2 and typing 'cat /proc/meminfo' and post the results of that here. I think the kernel may not be seeing all of your RAM.
The shown results are: total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached: mem: 14688256 14295040 393216 2142208 4116480 3354624 Swap: 0 0 0 MemTotal: 14344 kB MemFree: 384 kB MemShared: 2092 kB Buffers: 4020 kB Cached: 3276 kB BigTotal: 0 kB BigFree: 0 kB SwapTotal: 0 kB SwapFree: 0 kB ============================================================================= I hope it helps to fix that problem...
I was right. The kernel is only seeing 14MB of RAM in your system. I can only assume that the upgrade to the BIOS caused this problem. The install will force text mode if there's less than 35MB of RAM. Since the kernel is only seeing 14MB, that's what is happening. Try booting with 'linux mem=128M" That should force the kernel to see all 128MB of your RAM. Does that help?
... wow, it works! :) Thank you!
I guess the motherboard maker messed up when they released the BIOS update since it used to work. Weird. Anyway, glad to know things are working now. Thanks for your report.