[rhn-users] Iwill DK88 hangs randomly during init with sata raid card

[Benj FitzPatrick]

Hello all,
I have a DK88 (1.30 bios), 3ware 9550 sata raid, onboard
nvidia sata (JBOD), and RHEL 4 for amd64.  The problem is only
with the smp kernel (2.6.9-34), though the only UP kernel I
have tried is 2.6.9-5.  The problem I have had when the raid
card is installed is that the computer will randomly stop
while booting.  Usually it begins during the "checking for new
hardware".  On a problem free boot it will take 4-5 seconds at
this stage, but if there is a problem it takes longer. 
Eventually it will kick out of the nice screen back to the
plain text console and go on to initializing swap.  This is
generally (90% of the time) where it hangs until I push the
reset button (sometimes it hangs just before starting the
logon screen, but that's only if it never switched to the
plain text console, and it is rare).  I'd say that it has
problems every 1 in 3 boots.

  I had similar issues with an areca 1110 card I had
previously, though it seemed to go away if I forced fsck to
run every boot up (yes I know that sounds crazy but it was 5
for 5 or 6 for 6).  

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Benj FitzPatrick
University of Chicago