[CentOS] ibm m1015 w/sandy bridge boot failure

Thu Oct 27 14:18:56 UTC 2011
Matt Garman <matthew.garman at gmail.com>

I have a server running CentOS 6.0.  Last night I replaced the CPU and
motherboard.  Old hardware: Supermicro x8sil-f + x3440.  New hardware:
Supermicro x9scl+-f + E3-1230.  This is a new Sandy Bridge Xeon.

Everything else remained the same, including an IBM m1015 SAS HBA.
This is just an IBM re-branded LSI 92xx-8i (9220-8i specifically I
believe), which uses the LSI SAS2008 chipset and the megaraid_sas
driver.  It worked without any issue on the old motherboard/cpu.
However, with the new motherboard/cpu, the system makes it through the
BIOS POST without any issue.  But about half-way through the kernel
initialization, it basically locks up.  It will sit there for several
minutes, doing nothing, then start printing out error messages (I was
unable to get a screenshot or take note of the errors).

But if I take the m1015 card out, the system boots quickly and without
issue, as it always has.

I saw this post[1] on the forums, which suggested that Sandy Bridge
really needs 6.1, which, for those of us using CentOS, we can only get
sorta close to by using the continuous release.  So I did a "yum
install centos-release-cr ; yum update".  I let everything install
(there were no install errors or problems), and rebooted with the
m1015 in back in the system, but the problem remains.

So now I'm at a loss.  Anyone have any thoughts?

[1] http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=33878&forum=56

Thanks,
Matt