Mike Ciul on 21 Feb 2006 04:15:38 -0000


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Re: [PLUG] BIOS EDD -- new install hangs


I'm having trouble installing Ubuntu. Even during the initial install,
the system freezes after about 5 minutes of uptime. By repeated
attempts, I got the thing to  install all the way, but it still freezes
after about  5 minutes. I can't find any log messages close to the time
of the freeze. I've tried a few kernel options (acpi=off, nolapic,
noapic), I've stabbed randomly at BIOS options, but nothing seems to
make any difference. Can anyone think of a reason why a system would
freeze after 5 minutes of doing nothing in particular? It even does it
in single-user  mode, so I don't think it's X-related.

Thanks for the help!

- Mikee

-- 
Assassination of persons responsible for atrocities or reprisals may
be regarded as just punishment. Killing a political leader whose
burgeoning career is a clear and present danger to the cause of
freedom may be held necessary.

But assassination can seldom be employed with a clear
conscience. Persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it.

 - CIA memo titled "A Study of Assasination" - obtained by the National
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   quoted in "Murder: Another CIA Manual Surfaces." CounterPunch, June
1-15, 1997.
On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 09:27:08PM -0500, Christopher M. Jones said:
> I'm trying to install linux on an older machine (Celeron 700 vintage).
> I've tried several distros: ubuntu, debian, Mandrake. All of them have
> the same result: they hang after ACPI reports its wake devices and EDD
> reports devices. The last line before a hang reads thus:
> 
> ACPI: (supports S0 S1 S3 S5)
> BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 6 devices found
> 
> After that, nothing.
> 
> Board is a SuperMicro 810 with Amibios 1997 1005001460 R 1.2C
> 
> I don't know what kernel version it's trying to install, since the
> messages go by so fast, but surely its the 2.6 series. By the way, an
> older Mandrake, 10.1 community, did boot on this machine at one time.
> 
> Any ideas? I'm not even sure what to google.

The bit that happens right after those two lines is usually the IDE
layer probing, so it may be that that's what's failing.  BIOS EDD was an
attempt to have a uniform way for the BIOS to tell the OS what disk to
boot from, among other things, but it doesn't always work out, or at
least that was my impression.  Can you try shutting off EDD in the BIOS?
Or maybe on the kernel command line?

Good luck,
-- 
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|  Stephen Gran                  | The graveyards are full of              |
|  steve@lobefin.net             | indispensable men.   -- Charles de      |
|  http://www.lobefin.net/~steve | Gaulle                                  |
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