Nvidia SATA hangups with newer FC5 test kernel

[Calvin Dodge]

I have an Asus K8N-VM with an Athlon64 3200+, running in 32-bit mode 
(had too many problems with 64-bit FC4 on two other Athlon64 systems -
one Nvidia-based, the other ATI-based).

I'm running FC5 test, and ran into a problem after a kernel upgrade.
(from 2.6.15-1996 to 2.6.15-2041 - hangup also happened with build
2032)

The SATA controller would timeout during the boot phase - not at
first, but during service startup  (the service which stopped was
never the same - sometimes postfix, sometimes spamd, sometimes
something else).

I finally did a compare of kernel messages from a 1996 bootup vs a
2041 bootup, and saw the difference was that 2041 enabled APIC by
default, while 1996 didn't.

I added "noapic" to the appropriate line in grub.conf, and now the
system runs fine in 2041.

I don't really need any help with this now that the system is working
on the newer kernel, but thought the powers-that-be might mention this
in some note.  Yes, the install notes might mention disabling APIC,
but I think a reasonable user might assume that if the initial kernel
ran just fine "out of the box", then  minor kernel upgrades would
work, too.


Calvin Dodge