After installing the red hat 9 (kernel 2.4.20), there are tow options in the booting list, one is "linux-up", the other is "linux-smp".
When booting the system by selecting the "linux-up" option, the system runs well. But if selecting the "linux-smp", system will hang-up showing error message.

the error message is like:

Kernel BUG at apic.c:298!
Invalid operand:0000
CPU:0
EIP:0060:[<C038F8C6>] Not tainted
EFLAGS:00010246

EIP is at setup_local_APIC [kernel] 0×26 (2.4.20-8smp)
eax: 00000000 ebx:ffffffff ecx:c033dd84 edx:c033dd98
esi: 000000ff edi:00000000 ebp:00000000 esp:f7fc9f94
ds: 0068 es:0068 ss:0068

Process swapper (pid:1, stackpage=f7fc9000)
Stack: c038fa7c 00000001 00000000 00000000 c038ff91 00000000 00000000 c038e7b1
c027fc00 00000000 c0385fd0 c010997d f7fc8000 00000000 00000000 00000000
c0386665 c010509b 00000000 c0105070 00000000 00000000 00000000 c010759d
Call Trace: [<c010997d>] reschedule [kernel] 0×5 (0×f7fc9fc0))
[<c010509b>] init [kernel] 0×2b (0×f7fc9fd8))
[<c0105070>] init [kernel] 0×0 (0×f7fc9fe0))
[<c010759d>] kernel_thread_helper [kernel] 0×5 (0×f7fc9ff0))

Code: 0f 0b 2a 0a f9 bd 27 c0 b8 ff ff ff ff a3 e0 d0 ff ff 8b 1d
<0> Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!




P.S. I have searched in google, and find the way to shutdown the APIC function in SMP mode, adding some parameters like "noapic acpi=off", but it doesn't work either.

Try the latest 2.6 kernel.

but i have to use the 2.4 kernel for my work...

Then use an older processor.

I have the latest 2.4 kernel from internet, 2.4.35, maybe i can compile the new kernel.