I have an older server I am trying to update to CentOS 4.3 but I can't get to the installer screen because the machine kernel panics when booted from the install CD. The error message I get is:
Kernel panic - not syncing: include/linux/smp_lock.h:25 spin_unlock(kernel/sched.c:c035) not locked
The boot messages before this point are mainly to do with acpi including:
acpi_ps_parse_anl acpi_?s_one_complete ... acpi_early_init start_kernel Kernel panic ....
At a guess, I tried starting the installer with the options: linux text acpi=off noprobe
I am not really clear on what part of the boot process is failing so I tried a number of random boot options including apm=off, noapic, apic, nomce. Nothing I tried change the error. (I also tried installing RHEL 4 but I got the same failure with less informative error reporting: Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!)
I also tried changing my BIOS options - changing the interupt mode from APIC to PIC which, if I understand the manual correctly, seems to be AMIBIOS's version of turning off Plug and Play. Same error.
Can anyone tell me what sort of thing is going wrong? Is the smp_lock.h stuff for dual processors? The motherboard I have would support 2 processors, but I only have one installed so don't see why I am in SMP code. Is there something I can do to get CentOS 4 to install? The only thing I can think of I haven't tried is to update the BIOS - mostly because the instructions are not very well translated so I am not completely sure how to use the Dual BIOS feature to roll back if the new BIOS version creates more problems than it solves.
Hardware:
Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValu... CPU is a single AMD XP2100+ Disk is a normal IDE Maxtor Memory 3 G of DDR SDRAM
I can install CentOS 3.8 on this machine just fine, but I would like to move to CentOS 4 because that is what my beefier database machines are running (or will when I get the rest of them upgraded).
Thanks for any help folks can give me.
Cynthia Kiser spake the following on 2/5/2007 1:50 PM:
I have an older server I am trying to update to CentOS 4.3 but I can't get to the installer screen because the machine kernel panics when booted from the install CD. The error message I get is:
Kernel panic - not syncing: include/linux/smp_lock.h:25 spin_unlock(kernel/sched.c:c035) not locked
The boot messages before this point are mainly to do with acpi including:
acpi_ps_parse_anl acpi_?s_one_complete ... acpi_early_init start_kernel Kernel panic ....
At a guess, I tried starting the installer with the options: linux text acpi=off noprobe
I am not really clear on what part of the boot process is failing so I tried a number of random boot options including apm=off, noapic, apic, nomce. Nothing I tried change the error. (I also tried installing RHEL 4 but I got the same failure with less informative error reporting: Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!)
I also tried changing my BIOS options - changing the interupt mode from APIC to PIC which, if I understand the manual correctly, seems to be AMIBIOS's version of turning off Plug and Play. Same error.
Can anyone tell me what sort of thing is going wrong? Is the smp_lock.h stuff for dual processors? The motherboard I have would support 2 processors, but I only have one installed so don't see why I am in SMP code. Is there something I can do to get CentOS 4 to install? The only thing I can think of I haven't tried is to update the BIOS - mostly because the instructions are not very well translated so I am not completely sure how to use the Dual BIOS feature to roll back if the new BIOS version creates more problems than it solves.
Hardware:
Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValu... CPU is a single AMD XP2100+ Disk is a normal IDE Maxtor Memory 3 G of DDR SDRAM
I can install CentOS 3.8 on this machine just fine, but I would like to move to CentOS 4 because that is what my beefier database machines are running (or will when I get the rest of them upgraded).
Thanks for any help folks can give me.
First thing... The motherboard in the link does NOT support 2 processors. Did you send wrong link?
Did you try installing with less memory?
See if you can boot from the 4.4 live CD.
Quoting Scott Silva ssilva@sgvwater.com:
First thing... The motherboard in the link does NOT support 2 processors. Did you send wrong link?
No just having a blond moment. Am I mistaken about the error message about smp_lock being for dual processor support?
Did you try installing with less memory?
No. Unless there is reason to suppect the panic is about memory, I would be reluctant to try that experiment. For one thing, the servers are not convenient to re-rack and they would be more use to me as CentOS 3 boxes with 3G of memory than as CentOS 4 boxes with less RAM.
See if you can boot from the 4.4 live CD.
Just burned one. Off to give it a try.
Cynthia Kiser spake the following on 2/5/2007 3:27 PM:
See if you can boot from the 4.4 live CD.
Just burned one. Off to give it a try.
Hmmmmm Writing this from the 4.4 live CD. So that works great. OK back to the office to burn a 4.4 install CD.
AFAIR the install cd only has a uniprocessor kernel, as only one processor is needed for an install. You might be hitting some kernel flaw in the install cd's boot kernel.
Quoting Scott Silva ssilva@sgvwater.com:
Cynthia Kiser spake the following on 2/5/2007 3:27 PM:
See if you can boot from the 4.4 live CD.
Just burned one. Off to give it a try.
Hmmmmm Writing this from the 4.4 live CD. So that works great. OK back to the office to burn a 4.4 install CD.
AFAIR the install cd only has a uniprocessor kernel, as only one processor is needed for an install. You might be hitting some kernel flaw in the install cd's boot kernel.
Actually I shouldn't have emailed so soon. For the first boot from the live CD I tried the specified failsafe options suggested in the prompt: linux nonet simplex acpi=off That booted all the way to a GUI - and had network support(!?). For my next attempt I just hit return and it hung. I couldn't find any virtual terminals with error messages, but that might be me not knowing the right key combination. Trying to boot with only acpi=off gets me much of the way - until the live CD tries to run X; then I get a very nice box bouncing around my screen saying "video mode not supported". The monitor is kind of crappy and obscure, so that is disappointing, but not a huge deal - and I think these instructions on the Scientific Linux site might let me fix that problem. http://linux.web.psi.ch/livecd/trouble.html
Burning the disk 1 of 4 iso for CentOS 4.4 and we'll see what that does.
Cynthia Kiser spake the following on 2/5/2007 4:14 PM:
Quoting Scott Silva ssilva@sgvwater.com:
Cynthia Kiser spake the following on 2/5/2007 3:27 PM:
See if you can boot from the 4.4 live CD.
Just burned one. Off to give it a try.
Hmmmmm Writing this from the 4.4 live CD. So that works great. OK back to the office to burn a 4.4 install CD.
AFAIR the install cd only has a uniprocessor kernel, as only one processor is needed for an install. You might be hitting some kernel flaw in the install cd's boot kernel.
Actually I shouldn't have emailed so soon. For the first boot from the live CD I tried the specified failsafe options suggested in the prompt: linux nonet simplex acpi=off That booted all the way to a GUI
- and had network support(!?). For my next attempt I just hit return
and it hung. I couldn't find any virtual terminals with error messages, but that might be me not knowing the right key combination. Trying to boot with only acpi=off gets me much of the way
- until the live CD tries to run X; then I get a very nice box
bouncing around my screen saying "video mode not supported". The monitor is kind of crappy and obscure, so that is disappointing, but not a huge deal - and I think these instructions on the Scientific Linux site might let me fix that problem. http://linux.web.psi.ch/livecd/trouble.html
Burning the disk 1 of 4 iso for CentOS 4.4 and we'll see what that does.
I think the live cd defaults to 1024x768 and 75 HZ, so it might be out of the monitors range.
On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 13:50 -0800, Cynthia Kiser wrote:
I have an older server I am trying to update to CentOS 4.3 but I can't get to the installer screen because the machine kernel panics when booted from the install CD. The error message I get is:
Kernel panic - not syncing: include/linux/smp_lock.h:25 spin_unlock(kernel/sched.c:c035) not locked
The boot messages before this point are mainly to do with acpi including:
acpi_ps_parse_anl acpi_?s_one_complete ... acpi_early_init start_kernel Kernel panic ....
At a guess, I tried starting the installer with the options: linux text acpi=off noprobe
I am not really clear on what part of the boot process is failing so I tried a number of random boot options including apm=off, noapic, apic, nomce. Nothing I tried change the error. (I also tried installing RHEL 4 but I got the same failure with less informative error reporting: Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!)
I also tried changing my BIOS options - changing the interupt mode from APIC to PIC which, if I understand the manual correctly, seems to be AMIBIOS's version of turning off Plug and Play. Same error.
Can anyone tell me what sort of thing is going wrong? Is the smp_lock.h stuff for dual processors? The motherboard I have would support 2 processors, but I only have one installed so don't see why I am in SMP code. Is there something I can do to get CentOS 4 to install? The only thing I can think of I haven't tried is to update the BIOS - mostly because the instructions are not very well translated so I am not completely sure how to use the Dual BIOS feature to roll back if the new BIOS version creates more problems than it solves.
Hardware:
Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-7VRXP http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValu... CPU is a single AMD XP2100+ Disk is a normal IDE Maxtor Memory 3 G of DDR SDRAM
I can install CentOS 3.8 on this machine just fine, but I would like to move to CentOS 4 because that is what my beefier database machines are running (or will when I get the rest of them upgraded).
Thanks for any help folks can give me.
I assume you are using the i386 install media ... and that you have tested it.
Also, why not try 4.4 media, as there is support for more hardware in the new kernel.
Also, verify that the motherboard has the latest BIOS (many acpi/apic issues get fixed in bios upgrades).
try these options:
noapic noacpi
Thanks, Johnny Hughes
Quoting Johnny Hughes mailing-lists@hughesjr.com:
Also, verify that the motherboard has the latest BIOS (many acpi/apic issues get fixed in bios upgrades).
Thanks all. Just to close this thread, upgrading the BIOS took care of the issues. I can now install from either the 4.4 release - or the 4.0 release and upgrade - without having to pass any kernel options to get things booted. Thanks for the advice.
-
Cynthia Kiser -
cynthia.kiser＠gmail.com -
Johnny Hughes -
Scott Silva