From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.3) Gecko/20010801 Description of problem: Installation crashes randomly during installation or post-install phase. Checked readability of CDROM under Win98 on same system - OK. Tested RH7.1 installation using graphical and text installation. In text installation Alt+F2 to shell and IDE drives are not functioning including CDROM drive, but Linux still running. Tried manual/automatic partitioning and e2fsck from 'rescue' boot. Partition table + FS OK. Same system installs 'Storm' Linux (Debian-based) successfully from IDE CDROM to IDE hard disk in ~20 mins. RH 7.1 estimated installation time ~6 mins. Wonder if it's a VIA chipset UDMA problem? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Boot from CDROM 2.follow default choices for text/graphical install Actual Results: Sometimes reach post-install phase, always crash Expected Results: Automatic re-boot after post-install scripts run Additional info: Flashed BIOS on FIC 503+ to JE439 (latest BIOS) - Win98, RH5 and Storm 2000 (Debian) Linux all install and work fine on the same system. BIOS is not Win2K compatible according to Win2K installer.
try booting with "linux ide=nodma" at the boot: prompt
Created attachment 32218 [details] /tmp/syslog from 'rescue' boot of 503+ system
Booting with ide=nodma did not cure the problem
Did you verify the md5sums of the ISO's before burning them?
Used cygwin md5sum to verify iso images - correct. Used Windows 'CDcheck' to verify readability of CD-R's - no errors. Installed on different system from same CD-R's using same CD R/W drive - success.
Weird. When you said in your first post that "IDE drives are not functioning, including the cdrom", what exactly does that mean?
I monitored the progress of the 'text' mode install from an alt+2 virtual tty and the system was working fine until the install crashed. Then, for a short time, my shell still appeared to be working but none of the IDE drives including the IDE CDROM drive were resonding. This 503+ based system works fine under RH5, or debian Linux - I've got two of these 503+ motherboards - both fail to install RH7.1. The install is very quick (unless I use ide=nodma) but the system seems to be unstable and crashes randomly during the install. On one occasion I got as far as the post-install scripts. I used different RAM and a different HD in each 503+ system when I tried to install RH7.1. The second 503+ system I used runs Win98 reliably.
Hmm. Since this seems to be motherboard specific, I'm going to change the component to the kernel. Perhaps there's something with the driver that's causing the system to hang.
Workaround: Substitute UDMA2-capable hard disk drive (WD Caviar AC22500L) for UDMA3 drive. System now installs and runs RH 7.1 (Seawolf) reliably. Not sure if this is a VIA chipset problem, but system runs Win98 reliably with VIA Win98 UDMA driver.