Strange 2.6 booting / freeze problems

Strange 2.6 booting / freeze problems

[Jarmo Järvenpää]

Dear list,

I have two servers which share same problem; kernel starts booting and 
freezes to line 'DMI 2.3 present' (thus, almost immediately).

The servers were installed with RH7.3 and RH9 (2.4 kernel) and later, 
were updated(=tested with) to 2.6.3,.4,.5 and .6.

1st server:
After compiling the 2.6 kernel, rebooted, kernel loading -> froze to 
line 'DMI 2.3 present'.
Tried to update to newer kernel(s) but with no success. Changed back to 
2.4.25 -> server ok.


2nd server:
Compiled 2.6.5, rebooted, kernel loaded ok. After release of 2.6.6, 
updated, rebooted, no problems.
Today, I was hoping to test server's raid 1 functionality, rebooted -> 
kernel would not load anymore (lilo and kernel were not touched after 
last update), last line to be seen is 'DMI 2.3 present'.

Updated lilo and bios, no help. Tried to boot with kernel parameters: 
acpi=off noapic nosmp notsc pci=noacpi apic=off, no help.

I had to downgrade to 2.4. :-(
--
The servers share at least one common thing, a i8xx chipset.


Jarmo