From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; Debian/1.3.3.20030406-1) Gecko/20030319 Galeon/1.3.3 Description of problem: The 2.4.x kernels in the installers of RedHat 7.3, 8.0 and 9.0 lock up immediately after displaying "Okay, booting the kernel..." on Shuttle FX41 motherboard with shared video memory. Motherboard has VIA KM266 chipset, with VIA "Savage 8" video chipset. Details of hardware here: http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=155 All installs hang at same point, regardless of options passed to kernel. I found roughly similar references to this problem in two previous LKML threads: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2002-50/0096.html http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0208.2/0772.html ... but suggestions to tweak mem= parameters were not effective in my situation. Kernel 2.2-based distributions, such as RedHat 6.2, boot fine. Upon further investigation, I found that the only 2.4 kernel I could get to boot was one from the Gentoo v1.4rc3 installer. I determined that Gentoo's installation kernel was patched with SGI's XFS patches, and this seemed to make the difference. Investigation of a diff between the vanilla kernel.org and XFS-patched versions of /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/setup.c showed a small difference in the memory detection code. I applied the changes found in the XFS code to a vanilla 2.4.20 kernel and was then able to boot successfully. Attached is the patch to kernel v2.4.20 that allowed for booting on this hardware. Note that I am by no means a kernel programmer, and have no way of knowing if my patch is safe or proper, though I figure the SGI guys know what they're doing :^) I submitted this patch to the maintainer of the i386 setup code, Dave Jones (davej) on 3/25/03, and he replied: "Yes, the zero sized e820 patch needs to go into 2.4 I sent it to Marcelo a while back. I'll retransmit." I thought I'd file a bug here as well so RedHat can patch their kernel at their leisure, and perhaps before upstream does so. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Put in RedHat installation CD 2. Press <ENTER> Actual Results: System locks up hard immediately after "Okay, booting the kernel..." Expected Results: Installer should have started. Additional info:
Created attachment 91025 [details] Patch against vanilla kernel 2.4.20 source which allows booting Kernel maintainer called this the "zero sized e820 patch"
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