Installation Hangs when installing RHEL 4 or 5 on IBM eserver xseries 300

[Rick Stevens]

On Mon, 2007-04-02 at 16:25 -0400, Bruce A. Friend wrote:
> Subject line pretty much says it all.  The installer runs until it gets to
> agpgart:  Detected VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset and there it stops.  Does
> this in both gui and text mode install.
> 
> I know this is not a powerhouse server but all I really want it to do is
> act as a firewall for another system.

Hmmm.  I've installed Fedora and CentOS on X330s and X335s, but I've not
tried RHEL 4 or 5.  I'd suggest two possible efforts:

Try this at the "Boot>" prompt of the installer:

	linux text noprobe

and see if that gets you along.  If it doesn't, try:

	linux text ide=nodma

One or the other should work.  Once the system is booted in the normal
OS, you can try to configure X by running "system-config-display" as
the root user from the command line.

If the "ide=nodma" is the line that got you in and you're running off
SCSI disks, you should be OK as you've disabled DMA on IDE devices
only.  If you're using IDE disks, you may want to try finding out which
IDE device is causing the issue (probably the CD drive).  Try entering
this command as the root user:

	hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

This re-enables DMA on your first hard drive.  See if the system is
still responsive.  If it is, then edit your /boot/grub/grub.conf file
and modify the "ide=nodma" bit on the various "kernel" lines to read
"hdc=nodma" (which will disable DMA on the CD drive ONLY instead of all
IDE drives).  Examples:

    WAS:
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-(vers) ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet ide=nodma

    CHANGE TO:
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-(vers) ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet hdc=nodma

Good luck!  Keep us informed, OK?

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- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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-  Jimmie crack corn and I don't care...what kind of lousy attitude  -
-                 is THAT to have, huh?   -- Dennis Miller           -
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