XW8200 Fedora Core 3 problem

[Mogens Kjaer]

I have a strange problem.

We had an XW8200 on loan from HP.

I installed Fedora Core 3, x86_64, without
any problems.

We have now bought our own system, but I
can't install FC3 on this! The SATA harddrive
is not recognized, and the USB mouse is
not recognized during installation.

There are two differences between the system
on loan and the system we've bought:

1. RAM size, our machine has 4G, the
loan machine 2G.
2. BIOS version. our machine has 1.07, the
on loan machine had 1.05.

Else the machines are identical, same disk,
same 2xCPU's, same graphics (nv3400).

I've tried upgrading the BIOS on the loan
machine to 1.07, it can still install FC3.

I've tried dumping the BIOS setup on the loan
machine (after the 1.07 upgrade) and have
loaded it on our own machine: It still can't
install FC3.

The output of lspci is identical on the
two systems.

The (32bit) RHEL3 preinstalled on our own
machine worked without problems...

Any suggestions ?

[xyko_1]

Hi Mogens,

try to find your answers here :
http://h10018.www1.hp.com/wwsolutions/linux/products/clients/xw8200-drivers-cert.html

If your problem continues I suggest to contact HP. I suppose your hardware has a regular maintenace contract.

Regards,
Xyko

[Mogens Kjaer]

Thanks xyko, but as Fedora isn't officially
supported by HP, I don't think this is
a good idea.

[Mogens Kjaer]

I found a workaround:

After removing 2 of the 4 Gb, FC3-x86_64
installs without problems.

I ran up2date (new kernel), and I've put
the memory back. The system doesn't boot
(the disk isn't found).

However, I can get the machine to boot by
adding the mem=xxxxM kernel parameter,
however, it will only use 3G memory,
even when I boot with mem=4096M.

mem= /proc/meminfo
value MemTotal

2048M 2057732 kB
3072M 3090824 kB
3584M 3083640 kB
4096M 3005384 kB

When I boot FC3-ix86, I get
4145268 kB for MemTotal.

Strange....

[xyko_1]

Hi Mogens,

You must see if your kernel was generated with support for big memory.

You have to have kernel sources installed and start the kernel configuration program "make menuconfig" to see the configuration you are using.
1 - install kernel sources and kernel headers
2 - cd /usr/src/linux* <= kernel source director
3 - make menuconfig
4 - select Processor type and features
5 - select High Memory Support
6 - select 4 Gb support
7 - exit and save the configuration file
8 - Proceed with a new kernel generation

If you don't know how to proceed to generate a new kernel and to update your boot loader, let us know.

But if you already has big memory support .... let us know also.

regards.
xyko

[Mogens Kjaer]

High memory is not relevant for a
64 bit kernel.

[xyko_1]

Sorry Mogens,

My mistake, I forgot we are dealing with a 64 bit situation.

Back to the books.

regards,
xyko

[Mogens Kjaer]

Hm, it looks to me that the problem
comes from devices mapping memory at
the 3G address and above.

If I understands:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-September/msg00211.html

correctly, the Xeon/EM64T is not so good at
handeling this as an AMD64 CPU.

[xyko_1]

Mogens,

As I could understand about the message from Alan Cox on your last reply, the complains are all about performance, not exactly a "not working" bug.

Did you tried some help from fedora mailling list ?
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list

regards,
xyko

[Mogens Kjaer]

Yes, apparently it is fixed in a
test version of the kernel:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-December/msg00882.html

[xyko_1]

Mogens,

I think you got your answer. That's the price we pay being a primer user of new tech.

If it's possible I suggest that you keep running a 32 bit version and wait for a while until 64 bit get mature.

Keep your eyes on the release notes to see when the new kernel with that fix came to the arena.

regards,
xyko