Hi All,

i have been using SuSE for atleast 2 years now, but now due to some projects and library conflicts i have to use FC4, the porblem is FC4 with default kernel kernel-smp-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 does not boot on my old Dual board (PII 350MHz 384MB Ram). The problem seemd to be with the ACIP but i have disabled it from BIOS now the kernel starts and after it looks for ACIP in BIOS. no action for some time, and then a long panic msg. i googled a bit and what i understand from all what i read is FC4 smp kernel is not stable and have to be recompiled is that true? do i have to recompile my own kernel, would it be wise to get a kernel from kernel.org (2.4.31 with rc2 patch)
please help me, i have trued to install FC4 in the last week atleast 5 times and get the same result, no matter what i do or what the BIOS setting is sellected, i also tried to update the BIOS with no change in result

BR
Sohail

I think in your case, yes, in the end you will have to recompile. The FC4 Release Notes mention that the kernel is optimized for Pentium4 systems. However, I do not think this should prevent installation.

Did you try installing UP instead of SMP (single processor mode)?
If that works then maybe once you are in you can recompile properly.

As for recompiling, please note the very drastic difference between the 2.4 kernel and 2.6. FC2 and newer use the 2.6 kernel. If you do plan to use FC4, I would recommend investigating a 2.6 kernel with any needed patches.

Thanks mjmwired, according to your advice, i booted to UP and then recompiled the 2.6 downloaded from kernel.org now it works fine, though got some problems with undefined symbols, but i think they are the upgrades and new things FC group added. now running with 2.6 self compiled kernel and every thing works fine
thanks again.

I'm glad it worked!! For some reason I was expecting you to have more difficulties.

Anyways, after recompiling the kernel a few times you'll understand the process much better. If you already didn't notice I have some fc4 kernel compile notes. If you were having problems with 'nonexistent symbol' you probably needed to run:
make oldconfig