Dell Poweredge 2450 - Fedora 4 Locks

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2005-10-26 at 10:44 -0700, Bret Stern wrote:
> Anyone..
> 
> I have a nice Dell 2450 without Raid.
> 
> Red Hat Fedora 4 installs but will lock up
> after a few moments of use.

Define "a few moments".  One minute?  Five minutes?  Ten seconds?

> I suspect a driver/module? for the AIC-7899 SCSI
> controller.

Uh, hmmm.  Generally, a problem with the main storage driver will be
instantaneous.

> I could use advice on which system log to look at,
> to determine the failure.

Use the output of "dmesg" as well as /var/log/dmesg.  You should also
look at /var/log/messages.

Try isolating things.  Try running in text mode only and see if the
problem is related to the X environment (it often is).  To set up
text mode, boot into single user mode, then edit the /etc/inittab file.
Change the line that reads:

	id:5:initdefault:

to read

	id:3:initdefault:

After saving the file, enter "exit".  The system will boot to run level
3 or text mode.  Try using it for a while.  If it doesn't lock up, try
switching to run level 5 (GUI mode) by entering "telinit 5".  If it
locks up, then you have an X issue and we'll have to deal with that.
If it doesn't lock up, you may have a power management issue with either
apm or acpi.  Change the line in /etc/inittab back to its original
format and try booting with the options "acpi=off apm=off" set (these
disable acpi and apm) and see if things get better.

NOTE: I use FC4 on Dell 1850s and 2850s with very few problems (if any).
I don't really know a lot about the 2450s, other than they've been
discontinued.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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- grasshopotomaus: A creature that can leap to tremendous heights... -
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