FC6 Hangs at initrd

[TheMaxx]

The installation of Fedora Core 6 on a brand new machine goes well until the first boot after the installer finishes.

I am getting this:

Booting 'Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2869.fc6)'

root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
     [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1e00, size=0x1b9970]
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6.img
     [Linux-initrd @ 0x37ddd000, 0x212bfe bytes]

Then the system hangs with a flashing cursor. This is not a hard lock, as CTRL-ALT-DEL works.

Hardware list:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Shuttle SD32G2 XPC (i945 Chipset)
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 (667)
Western Digital 250GB IDE (PATA)
Asus DVD Burner
BFG Technologies GeForce 7600GTOC PCI Express w/256MB
Hauppauge WinTV401 PCI TV Tuner

Things I have tried. Ran memtest86+, passed. I started with a WD 320GB SATA drive, swapped it to the 250GB IDE, no change. Removed TV Tuner, no change. Removed BFG video card and moved to the onboard Intel video, no change. Disconnected USB Card Reader, no change. Clean load of Windows XP....works. I have tried the original FC6 i386 release, the original FC6 x86_64 release, and both FC6 respins from Fedora Unity. They all do the same thing.

I have searched the forum, and found nothing that worked, I searched Google and found nothing that worked. Does anybody have any ideas?

Stephen Todd

[kkalinux]

Have you try writing zeros to hard drive and doing a reinstall.
I used Maxtor MaxBlast to solve similar problem.

One other thing , you don't have your cpu manually overclocked do you?

See ya,
Kurt

[TheMaxx]

just tried that last night. I used DLGDIAG to write zeroes to the drive. No change. Nothing is overclocked, everything is stock.

Stephen

Originally Posted by kkalinux

Have you try writing zeros to hard drive and doing a reinstall.
I used Maxtor MaxBlast to solve similar problem.

One other thing , you don't have your cpu manually overclocked do you?

See ya,
Kurt

[kkalinux]

Is acpi on or off?

[a thing]

From the GRUB menu, edit the kernel line (hit e when Fedora is selected, then e again when the line with kernel in it is selected) and remove "quiet".

[TheMaxx]

Originally Posted by kkalinux

Is acpi on or off?

Tried it both ways. Turned it off in the BIOS, it didn't help. Odd that the installer's kernel will boot and not the installed kernel.

[TheMaxx]

Originally Posted by a thing

From the GRUB menu, edit the kernel line (hit e when Fedora is selected, then e again when the line with kernel in it is selected) and remove "quiet".

Did that. Didn't help still hangs at the same place.

In the last message I mentioned that it was odd that the installer's kernel booted but not after being installed, so I booted GParted LiveUSB from my Sandisk Flashdrive. Boots up just fine and shows the partitioning of the drive. It shows the 100MB /boot partition but the rest of the drive is set up an LVM and it can not read it.

Booting the Installer DVD with the linux rescue option, I ran FDisk and Parted after doing a chroot /mnt/sysimage and it shows all partitions are normal and accessible. I can even navigate the directory structure. I checked GRUB and its configuration and everything looks normal.

Is this possibly a kernel incompatibility with the cpu? Maybe a newer kernel?

I am stumped.

Stephen

[kkalinux]

If that was mine, I would love to see if Freespire Alpha would install and boot but the Alpha 3 has a grub issue that has to be worked around and Alpha4 isn't ready yet.

Yes, I agree, that is interesting, and my I add ... troublesome.

[TheMaxx]

OK, I tried another clean load of the FC6 Re-spin DVD. This time I downloaded the latest kernel from the updates repository and copied to a CF card. I booted the FC6 Re-spin DVD with the linux rescue option. then did a chroot /mnt/sysimage and mounted the cf card (32MB fat16) and then installed the new kernel (latest i686) rpm. The system still hangs at the same spot, just after initrd.

Even though Windows XP works, I think I may have a hardware problem, because every software change/fix implemented...fails.

What do you guys think? Should I try RAM first? then the Shuttle XPC itself?

This is starting to drive me nuts.

Stephen Todd

[kkalinux]

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

If you have a Windows system you can get this made on , I would give it a shot. I know you used Memtest86 already but I did have one instance myself where I ran Memtest 86 for about 12 hours straight and it said I didn't have any problem.

I tried the memory tester from Microsoft and used the advanced testing option an it found an error in less than an hour. Of, course I had to start retesting with one stick of mem. in at a time , till I located the bad one. After removing the defective one the system was fine.

Good luck , Kurt

[TheMaxx]

It turns out that I am not the only one with a Shuttle SD32G2 that is have this exact problem. And, it happens with a lot of the other ditributions as well. It seems the only distro that will work, somewhat, is Suse 10.2.

I modified my google searches to include the SD32G2 and found this:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2026066

I guess I should have paid more attention before buying my SD32G2.
Now what? I don't want to switch to Suse, I have been using RedHat distros since 5.2.

Sigh (TM)

Stephen Todd

[kkalinux]

Originally Posted by TheMaxx

.....Even though Windows XP works, I think I may have a hardware problem, because every software change/fix implemented...fails.....?

This is starting to drive me nuts.

Stephen Todd

Yes, looks like a problem but .... does that explain the Windows issue also??

[TheMaxx]

OK, so the Shuttle BIOS doesn't play nicely with the Linux kernel, or GRUB, one of the two. At any rate, I disabled UDMA in BIOS and it boots! I lose access to my DVD burner since it is EIDE. Anybody know where I can get a Silver SATA DVD Burner?

Thanks for the help.

Stephen Todd