From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.3) Gecko/20010816 Description of problem: RedHat 7.2 (and 7.1) completely fail when you try to intall on the Intel ISP2150 platform (which is, according to the HCL a "RedHat Ready" system). Apparetnly either the kernel module for the AIC7XXX doesn't like this Adaptec chips in the system or Anaconda is dying the true death. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.start installation on an ISP2150 2.Hit ALT-F2 to look at kernel messages 3. See lots of SCSI but resets and timeouts, ad infinitum Actual Results: Tried installation several times... got really bummed out, went got a few beers. Tried again on several other ISP2150s with the same results... got upset and considered switching to another Linux distribution. Expected Results: Linux should have installed without a hitch Additional info: This has been an outstanding problem since RH7.1 -- please get this fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This sounds like the kernel has a problem loading the module. Changing components.
This machine has an 440GX chipset which, due to a bug in the Intel bios, doesn't work out of the box. Please try adding "apic" to the syslinux commandline.(eg type "linux apic" on the very very first screen) the official text agreed between Intel and Red Hat is: Most implementations using the 440GX chipset require the "apic" option to function correctly. When this is the case, providing DMI information to Red Hat as documented below[1] may allow us to automate that setting in the future. On some systems, the "apic" boot flag may not work. Unfortunately, because of Intel Proprietary information, these platforms are not supported at this time. [1] wget http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/dmidecode.c gcc dmidecode.c -o dmidecode ./dmidecode | \ mail -s 'requires apic option to install' hardwarebugs-list
The "linux apic" trick seems to have worked. Thanks! A side note, however, RedHat version 6.2 and 7.0 installed PERFECTLY on this same machine. Out of exasperation I went and got a copyt of SuSE 7.3 Pro and it installed in a flash on the same machine without a single hiccup. I have also installed SuSE and RH7.0 on dozens and dozens of other ISP2150s of varying vintages without a single other problem -- except where I have tried to install RH7.1 or RH72. So.... I would suggest that blaming Intel for what is clearly a driver bug in the RedHat version of the aic7xxx drivers is, um, well, probably not what you really meant and borders on the disingenuous.
The fact that "apic" worked means it's NOT an aic7xxx driver bug. We've talked LONG with intel about this and they admit it's a bios bug. SuSE 7.3 works because they make "apic" the default, which we and they know will break on other machines. If you sends me the output of dmidecode (see previous comments on how) then your machine will work fine the next version as your bios will then be added to the "known broken" list which has "apic" automatically.
I have found this bug affects our 440GX mobo machine as well. I'll run the program and send ya the output as soon as it finishes installing. It would be nice, though, to at least have some release notes about these kinds of known issues, affecting very popular hardware, regardless of whose fault it is. Intel 440GX motherboards aren't exactly exotic stuff; they're still the backbone of server farms everywhere.
RH 7.3 installation ALSO fails on Intel ISP2150 But this time it is even worse: it won't boot to the prompt where the apic parameter could be passed to the kernel. It simply doesn't boot.
sanmi: If you don't get to the syslinux screen it's not the kernel's fault, the kernel isn't even loaded at that time; please file a separate bug against syslinux for that.
Based on info we were finally able to extract from Intel most 440GX should work with RH9. If you have a board that doesnt please reopen the bug and also attach a dmidecode dump from it if you can
the stock RH9 boot CD fails on ISP2150 type machines unless you use "boot apic" at the SYSLINUX prompt. Even once you build a system you must edit the grub command line to incude "apic init=/bin/init" in order to get the system to come up after instalation.
Can you run dmidecode on that system. It may be we need to add another bios string to include it. Thanks
and there is no apic commandline option anymore....
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/