FC6 T3 install woes

[David Burgess]

I've also seen the black screen freeze up.

I've had nothign but trouble with the x86_64 install.

First time it seemed go okay but I got a kernal panic and it simply rebooted 
and rebooted and rebooted.

The next time I got the "black screen of death"

Next time I got as far as far as finishing formating my hard drives and when 
it moved on to installing packages it stopped and eventually I had to reset.

Next time it wouldn't even finish formating my harddrives

The i386 DVD iso installed without a single hickup.

Whatever the problem is I think  it's specific to the 64bit version of FC6 
Test 3.

I'm running:

ASUS A8N-E MB
AMD Athlon 2400
2G of RAM
NVidia 6600GT card (that also has "issues")
two Western Digital Raptor SATA I harddrives

Oh ya - I've also tried this with two different ISO images on two different 
brands of media downloaded on different days via different ISP's onto 
different computers and burned using different DVD writers and both images 
pass the media check.
>From: Josep Puigdemont <josep.puigdemont at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases 
><fedora-test-list at redhat.com>
>To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases 
><fedora-test-list at redhat.com>
>Subject: Re: FC6 T3 install woes
>Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 11:19:09 +0200
>
>Hi,
>
>I tested the installation CD again and I think the problem (in my case)
>is the sata_promise driver. See below.
>
>El ds 16 de 09 del 2006 a les 23:14 +0200, en/na Josep Puigdemont va
>escriure:
> > El ds 16 de 09 del 2006 a les 13:04 -0700, en/na listman va escriure:
> > > I've tried 2 different dvd iso's (different servers and can not boot
> > > either one ( FC-6-Test3-x86_64-DVD.iso)
> > > Home built / ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce SPP 100 
>ATX
> > > AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), 
>~2.2GHz
> > > 2048MB corsair XMS 3500LLPro
> > > Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3250620AS 250GB 
>7200
> > > RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
> > > eVGA 256-P2-N584-AR Geforce 7900GT KO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 
>Video Card
> > >
> > > I then downloaded the cd ISO. I got to the beginning of the install, 
>check
> > > the media (was ok) then as soon as it searches for a previous install 
>the
> > > screen goes black - can see the cursor still but it just hangs. If I 
>go to
> > > the console I see a ton of errors ( how can I export this info)
> > > I have tried text and noprobe but I still get the same thing, except 
>in
> > > text only mode I cant even read the errors- its just a bunch of 
>strange
> > > characters.
> >
> > I didn't have the problems you face above, but I've seen the strange
> > characters in console you mentioned. Here is a picture I took of the
> > screen:
> > http://dsv.su.se/~icss-jpc/fedora/anaconda01.jpg
> >
> > I am not 100% sure about it, but the strange characters seem to appear
> > after some kernel modules are loaded (I could see raid stuff in the
> > second console, although I don't have raid).
>
>After retesting, I realize this happens right after loading the
>sata_promise kernel driver. I tested several times with and without the
>SATA controller enabled in the BIOS, and the strange characters _always_
>appear once the sata_promise is loaded.
>
>Related to this problem, I've previously filed a bug (#199142) against
>the kernel for FC5 (all 2.6.17 kernels have this problem for me). When
>booting, I could see a "unable to handle kernel NULL pointer
>dereference" message. Disabling the SATA controller makes this error
>message disappear. I think there must be some bug in that driver that
>causes the two problems.
>
>The sata controller that I disabled on the BIOS is P20579. My
>motherboard is microstar K8T Neo 2. For more info, the whole output of
>lspci is on the bug report mentioned above.
>
>
> >
> > The big blue area in the middle of the screenshot is due to the media
> > check dialog (which I ran, and was ok). I can't remember if the
> > characters in the media check dialog where also strange or not. I think
> > they were, but then how could I say that the media check was ok...
>
>I was wrong, I can confirm that the media check messages were actually
>clear text:
>http://dsv.su.se/~icss-jpc/fedora/anaconda02.jpg
>
>
> > As it can be seen at the bottom, before starting the graphical installer
> > the characters appear normally. The rest seemed to work fine (I didn't
> > do the whole install).
>
>During one of the tests, I had the problem with the black screen. When
>the graphical installer is to start, the screen went black and couldn't
>do anything, neither could I see the mouse pointer, nor could I go back
>to the text consoles. I had to reset the computer. That could be the
>memory corruption Paul mentions (BZ #206472), but I could not reproduce
>it, it's strange that only happened once out of 10 tests I did (I would
>expect it to be more deterministic).
>
>Is there a bug report filled about the strange characters, by the way?
>
>Hope it helps.
>
>/Josep
>
>
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