SOLUTION: Replaced bad SCSI controller. Yet another great moment of learning how to be a good Sys Admin - know when to lookup warranty info and call Dell. :-)

All:

Trying to install SuSE 10 64-bit on a Dell box, it gets to about 2 minutes left when it *should* switch to the second CD, and then it just hangs - CD tray doesn't open, no messages - just hangs.

Tried burning another set of good CD's, tried booting without ACPI, etc, etc.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

First suse 10 is rather out dated now ,because after that we get 10.1 , 10.2,10.3 and now we are at suse 11.
So my first impression is the media is not good or you computer is too new for suse 10
Suse has a media check do you use it
If you have a adsl connection download suse 11 CD or DVD
If you choice for the cd version in the first place you only get the KDE OR GNome depending with one you choice
Suse version 10 is no longer supported

This is for a QA test server. There are several identical PowerEdge 2900's that run SLES 10 SP1 just fine, so this is why your above statement is not useful to me.

Here's what happens - keep in mind, it's a Dell PowerEdge 2900, dual Xeon, EM64T - and yes, I'm using the EM64T SLES 10:

1) Pop in CD #1, boot server, kick off install for SLES 10, start install as normal.
2) Install commences, begins installing packages, says at the bottom 'Next CD: 2'.
3) Install proceeds as normal, gets to about 2 mins left, tries to install the 'YaST' package.
4) System stalls, then after about 5 minutes, completely hard freezes the entire server - have to hard reboot.

Gentoo works fine, Red Hat works fine, I've used 3 completely different sets of SLES 10 CD's, and it hangs in the same exact place, every time - gets to 'installing YaST', then bombs completely.

I've tried acpi=none, I've tried booting into text mode, I've tried unplugging all ethernet cable connections, I've tried it all - nothing. The same exact machine but 1u down has SLES 10 SP1 running with 0 problems. All I can say is, WTF?

Any ideas here? This is insane. Damn computers...