2001-12-27 12:26:34

by Dominik Mierzejewski

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Subject: 2.2/2.4 Kernel oops/hang right after Calibrating delay loop...

Hello list.
My friend and I are trying to put together an old P133 box as a small
server, but we can't even boot the kernel.
We tried booting from RedHat's CDs versions from 6.0 to 7.2 as well as
with a vanilla 2.4.17 kernel compiled for Pentium with gcc-2.96-98.
The problem is 100% repeatable and looks as follows:
(normal boot messages)
Calibrating delay loop... and here we get different oopses, i.e.
Unable to handle paging request or General Protection Fault and a few others.
Often the oops mesage was incomplete, as if the kernel hanged while writing
it. It is totally random at this point.

So, if anyone has _any_ idea where to look for the cause of this problem,
we'd really appreciate it.
Could this be a hardware problem?

--
"The Universe doesn't give you any points for doing things that are easy."
-- Sheridan to Garibaldi in Babylon 5:"The Geometry of Shadows"
Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski <rathann(at)we.are.one.pl>


2001-12-27 16:40:04

by Alan

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Subject: Re: 2.2/2.4 Kernel oops/hang right after Calibrating delay loop...

> So, if anyone has _any_ idea where to look for the cause of this problem,
> we'd really appreciate it.
> Could this be a hardware problem?

Almost certainly. Check the heatsink/fan on the CPU, the voltages. Check the
RAM is seated ok and run memtest86 on it

2001-12-27 17:14:36

by Dominik Mierzejewski

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Subject: SOLVED Re: 2.2/2.4 Kernel oops/hang right after Calibrating delay loop...

On Thursday, 27 December 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
> > So, if anyone has _any_ idea where to look for the cause of this problem,
> > we'd really appreciate it.
> > Could this be a hardware problem?
>
> Almost certainly. Check the heatsink/fan on the CPU, the voltages.

That was ok, but ...

> Check the RAM is seated ok and run memtest86 on it

... that wasn't. It turned out that both the DIMM (PC66) chip and
the SIMM chips I tried were defective. Strangely enough,
another (known to be good) PC133 DIMM wouldn't work at all, i.e.
the machine would even show BIOS POST screen. Anyway, thanks for
all your help, list.

--
"The Universe doesn't give you any points for doing things that are easy."
-- Sheridan to Garibaldi in Babylon 5:"The Geometry of Shadows"
Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski <rathann(at)we.are.one.pl>