Description of problem: RedHat 9 (shrike) goes through a successful install then fails to boot, locking up on "Finding Module Dependancies" just after mounting the root partition. Have tried using both the nForce IDE controler as well as a Promise Ultra 100TX2 IDE controller (came with the drive) The drive is a 200gb western digital wd2000JBRTL. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Red Hat 9 How reproducible: Every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install RedHat from Shrike disks, put / /boot /usr /home and swap on 200g HD 2. When install complete, remove disks from drives and try to boot 3. Actual results: On Rebooting, the boot hangs at "Finding Module Dependancies". Keyboard stops responding, ctrl-alt-del doesn't work, caps lock light doesn't come on when key is pressed. Results are identical whether the 200gig (where linux is installed) is on nForce IDE controller or the Promise IDE controller (pci card). Boot from emergency floppy has same results Boot "linux rescue" from CD will mount the hard drive which can be browsed and fsck'ed without errors. hdparm -tT gives reasonable results when run against the drive. Expected results: System should boot normally. Additional info: System is an Athlon 2000XP, Asus A7N266-E nForce motherboard, 1gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 4600 video card, Promise Ultra100TX2 IDE controller, 120gb IBM hard disk (on nForce controller, windows only, NOT mounted under linux) 200gb western digital hard drive (tried on both nForce IDE and the Promise controller) and an Adaptek FireConnect 4300 1394 controller (nothing connected to it). microsoft USB explorer mouse and standard PS/2 keyboard and a 3com network card in addition to the realtek ethernet on the motherboard. When linux rescue boot is used, hdparm says the drive is in udma5 mode with dma on and 32 bit mode set. The 200g hard drive is new and passes it's stand-alone diagnostics supplied by western digital. I have a system at work which is identical in every way except it's hard disks are smaller (80gb and a 20gb) and runs RedHat fine. The 200g drive had the same problem with RedHat 8
Ok, over the weekend I tore the computer down piece-by-piece to find out what was causing the hangs. After a LOT of messing about the problem seems to be USB. If ANY USB devices are connected the boot will hang at "Finding Module Dependancies" during the call to depmod -A Pull out the USB devices, boot's fine. Also, if you hot-plug a USB device (I tried keyboard and mouse) once the system is up and running, you will get an instant lock-up. When the system locks up, there is nothing in the log files. In case this is useful info, here is what is returned when the kernel probes the NFORCE chipset about USB. NFORCE chipset revision 195 USB-00:02.0 PCI DEV 10DE:0102 USB OHCI at membase 0xf8849000 IRQ 10 This covers the first 3 usb ports, it finds a second device USB-00:03.0 for the second 3 ports, with the same info as above. My system at the office (identical ASUS A7N266-E mobo) does not have any problems with USB under linux, the only difference between the two machines is that the one with problems has BIOS update 1004 and the one at work has 1001. The BIOS upgrade was necessary to get LBA48 disk support and to fix an IRQ allocation problem with 1394 cards. The 1004 bios also broke GRUB 0.92 which would report not enough ram to load the kernel, GRUB 0.93 (in RH9) fixes this problem. Any help fixing this USB issue would be appreciated. I'm happy to conduct tests on my machine if necessary.
I have the exact same problem (and now, solution!) with an Asus A7N266-VM.
This bug is a real show-stopper for a lot of people because it allows NO usb devices to be used. (I've seen numerous postings about it on the net and quite a few here that look related). I'm generally not one to complain but this has been here for over a month and it doesn't look like anyone from RedHat has even looked at it yet. Usually, a bug that causes a hard lock-up is given more priority than this.
You seem to assume that with nvidia chipsets there is anything we can do, and/or that bugzilla is a support mechanism. Unfortionatly there isn't much we can do for nvidia chipsets in general. In addition this sort of bug is a bios issue most of the time.
I saw the same hang in Bug# 91264. The cause attributed is different here. But I feel its the same cause. I have suffered from this hang myself and have debugged this by adding echo statements in the init scripts(by using the resuce mdoe of the CD and doing a mount of the root disk on /mnt/sysimage....) The final command being executed is depmod -A. This hangs. However in the rescue mode if I do a chroot and then do a depmod -A, it does not hang(irresepctive of the state of USB devices). So I feel its a problem with IDE driver of NVidia and booting from blocks greater than a certain number (1K used to be the limit, I don't know what's the case now) Hope this helps, Vinay
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/