RHEL 5 Install Problem - Infinite Reboot Loop
 

Hey guys. I'm having problems trying to install Red Hat Enterprise 5 on a new quad-core Dell Optiplex 755. It looks like it installs correctly, but when it is booting up, it just reboots, seemingly at random times. And then it reboots again, and again, and never gets the OS started up. I've tried installing an older version of 5 that I already had, along with the newest version, and both have the infinite reboot loop problem. I'm thinking it might be a driver issue, but I don't know what's going on. Any suggestions?

Thanks.
Aaron

Certainly RHEL5 will not be expected to handle all the latest HW. You need to see what is happening during the boot - if you see the splash screen with a progress bar instead of scrolling text, then you need to press esc (or what it tells you) to see more information.

Have a look at:
http://ithacafreesoftware.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=721

I've tried going into the interactive startup, and choosing to not start some things, but it still keeps rebooting randomly during startup. I'm stumped.

Without more information about what is going on, there is nothing I can do except direct you to people who have GNU/Linux working on the offchance that changing distro will help. That's what the link was for.

One thing that can cause odd reboots is buggy acpi.
Try adding acpi=off to the kernel line in grub.conf.

did you install xorg packages or have your configured X windows? if it tries
to boot into runlevel 5 (gui mode) and xorg is misconfigured, try booting into
runlevel 1 or 3 (you can do that via grub menu).