Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 83231
install hangs on SMP system
Last modified: 2005-10-31 17:00:50 EST
Description of problem: I have two SMP systems where the install hangs (both gui and text). I have tried local cdrom, hard drive, and nfs installs. Both of these systems have successfully installed 8.0.92. The install hangs are various places but usually when it is starting X. I suspect that the problem is really a kernel problem but it happens at various places during install. The cdroms have been mediachecked OK and successfully used to install on non-smp systems. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 8.0.93 One system is a dual PIII (933MHz) with 900MB ram and ATI 7500 video. The other is a dual PII (400MHz) with 300MB ram and ATI Rage video. Both successfully install and run 8.0 and 8.0.92. How reproducible: always
Anything obviously wrong printed out on any VCs? Does sysreq tell you anything?
I just ran a test on one of the systems. I found on VC4 messages saying hdd lost interrupt multiple times. hdd is the cdrom drive. I will check the other system in a couple of minutes. Strange that this occurs only with SMP systems. I also tried using "linux ide=nodma askmethod" and it hung as soon as it tried to get to the cdrom. BTW, I believe the Red Hat mailing list servers are constipated again.
OK, similar thing on the second (dual P-III) system. Two happenings: 1. Did "linux ide=nodma askmethod" and then selected local cdrom. This hung solid (freeze) when it got the first X screen up with the mouse. I could do nothing ... could not switch to VCs. 2. Did "linux ide=nodma askmethod text" and then again selected Local cdrom. This got further -- to actual install. While formating "/" (only one partition 5GB partition defined), it hung about 75% into formatting. Checking VC4, I found: Lots of messages saying <6>ide: no cache flush required and finally: <3>hdb: lost interrupt hdb is the drive containing the "/" partition. BTW, this system (and the other one) both have 8.0 and 8.0.92 installed and running.
OK, I am changing this to the kernel component. Thanks to Smooge, the problem appears to be released to APIC. I booted the cdrom with "linux noapic" and successfully installed and ran 8.0.93. I am ading arjanv to the cc list since that seems to be who get assigned kernel stuff. Please adjust the cc list as appropriate or make this a dup of something that I missed in my searches.
the apic stuff has been removed since a few days; that should fix this too.
I hope just from the install (BOOT) kernel since it seems to work fine when I am running the smp kernel. I have not tested it yet but how about the regular non-smp kernel. Would running it with APIC enabled screw things up? If so then maybe it should only be enabled for the smp kernel. You comment about APIC being removed a few days ago. I have not tried one of the more recent kernels but it is enabled for the 2.4.20-2.24 smp kernel (the one that does not have the shutdown problem).
yes I meant the BOOT kernel. SMP kernel of course still has apic (no SMP system without apics exist). It's removed in -2.27 or so.. -2.30 has the reboot problem fixed fwiw