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From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.14; Mac_PowerPC) Description of problem: Installer seems to hang during the initial 'loading aic7xxx' module message. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Insert bootable installation cd-rom 2. Turn on PC Actual Results: The installer hangs. Expected Results: The installer completes Additional info: This identical problem happened under the 7.2 install, and it was determined that there was a bug between the 2.4.x kernel running in non- SMP mode and the aic7xxx card that is embedded into the motherboard. The solution was that a redhat person uploaded some install images which were SMP enabled. (As I recall, it was a problem with the APIC system?)
I guess I should have looked a bit harder, because I was able to get this working using workarounds from previous redhat versions. It would be nice if this issue could be resolved sometime, as it seems to have reappeared in every redhat since 7.1. I don't recall other distributions having the same symptoms during that time period. (the 'linux apic' commandline option fixed this one)
It's an Intel bios bug; please contact intel for an upgrade
Also please run the dmidecode program from the kernel-utils package and attach the output; with that we can make the "apic" automatic for your exact bios
Created attachment 58088 [details] Output from dmidecode
We have an L440GX+ board that exhibits this problem. The various "pci=", SMP kernel, and "apic" workarounds did not help. Fortunately, the system we were installing to had a RAID controller (used a different driver), and an IDE CD-ROM. So, we did a "noprobe" install, skipped the "aic7xxx" driver, and got a working system. We then downloaded kernel 2.4.20 (final release, pristine sources), did a custom build, and tried that. It worked perfectly. It appears that Alan Cox obtained information from Intel that lead to a fix. See also Bug 78234 (against RHL 8.0), which lead me to this solution.