kernel panic with 2.6.x kernel on LH4 netserver

[Bryan Eley]

Has anyone had any luck installing Redhat or Suse or a variant of one of those (Fedora, CentOS, Clarkconnect) that has a 2.6-based kernel on an LH4 netserver? I keep getting kernel panic messages from the Redhat variants, and Suse versions (Pro 9.1 & 9.2) lock up on a blank screen just after booting of the cd but before the gui screen comes up...I imagine if I did a text install I'd see a kernel panic message there as well.

Any ideas or does the 2.6 kernel not play nice with the LH4? The system has been stripped down to just a NIC, 2MB onboard video, onboard megaraid (sym53c895) controller with RAID 5, 1GB RAM.

[Steven E. Protter]

I've seen it on this kernel.

It is usually a result of the following causes, which i've ordered in importance as best I can:

hardware installed unsupported by the OS
bad memory chip or other hardware going bad
completely corrupt boot disk.

I'd check these issues out with the manufacturers hardware check cd.

SEP

[NiCK_76]

Hi Eley,

You should try "acip=off" and "pci=noacpi".

Good luck
NiCK

[Craig Gilmore]

I can offer you a ray of hope.

I have a Netserver LD Pro that has successfully loaded Red Hat RHEL 4. The on-board video card has not worked since 7.3 of Red Hat, but I don't want graphics at the console.

Good luck!

[Jaqui]

the only thing I have seen lock suse up like that is a non scsi enabled bios.
( doubt that's the cause here )

seems that suse uses the scsi interface for the kernel modules, and if the bios doesn't allow scsi it lock on boot.

( had this on both a livecd and install with suse )

[Bryan Eley]

I believe Jacqui is on the right track here. I've done some more research and found some LH4-specific postings regarding the 2.6 kernel and the current incompatibility with the onboard LSI/Symbios sym53c895/megaraid raid controller. I've been able to get RHEL 3.4 on the system without any problems, but I tried the version 4 and got a kernel panic error, which was very similar to the kernel panic error from the Clarkconnect 3.0 distro's message and new SuSE 2.6-kernel based OSes. It seems a shame to likely have to change the raid controller in order to keep current with linux offering when Win 2003 has installed without a hitch as well.
Anyone got a 2.6 multiprocessor-compiled sy53c895/megaraid module I can insert? ;-)

[Arthur Hecker]

Keeping this going in the hopes that somebody can report getting a 2.6 kernel with the megaraid modules running.

I've seen this on my LH4 with both Fedora Core 3 and Mandrake Community (10.1). FC3 is a 2.6.9 kernel (I think), Community is 2.6.8. The panic seems to be during the search for i450NX host bridges during the PCI probe. The acip=off and pci=noacpi don't help.

I have seen posted that Fedora Core 4, a linux 2.6.11 kernel due out in a couple of weeks fixes this problem.

I have tried Mamdrake 10.2 (Cooker) beta - now called Limited Edition 2005 beta - also a 2.6.11 kernel and it does complete the PCI probe and does not panic. It can not load the megaraid module for the NetRAID controllers and can't find any devices suitable for installtion.

I am content to wait a couple of weeks for either of these releases if somebody can find a megaraid module that will work with the NetRAID controllers.

[Bryan Eley]

Arthur, have you tried the install with I20 disabled? I know this was an issue with certain Suse flavors and was curious if you tried it on your LH4. I didn't need to for Suse 7.2 & 7.3 but did for Suse 8.2. I'm just curious if Mandrake might need this option disabled as well.

[Arthur Hecker]

Bryan,

I just tried it with the Mandrake 10.2 beta (the only release I have that gets past the PCI probe). Turning off the I2O emulation doesn't seem to matter. The installation is complaining about the megaraid module being missing.

I tried FC3 again just to be sure and it still panics in the PCI probe.

On other forums, I have seen reports that the old megaraid module was replaced by a new one but that the new one does not support the NetRAIDs. The only solution to the NetRAID controller problem I have seen was someone at RedHat finding an old megaraid module, compiling it for FC3, and creating a driver diskette image for download. I would use this if FC3 would complete the PCI probe.