Red Hat 9 installation probs - PCI cache line size
 

Anyone know how to work round this one?

I am trying to install red hat 9

It always freezes on this message

PCI: 00:03.2 PCI cache line size set incorrectly (32 bytes) by BIOS/FW
PCI: 00:03.2 cache line size too large - expecting 16

I have trawled everywhere I could find and nowhere explains it.

The closest was here and the reply was to turn off PnP in the bios, that didn't work either......

Hi and welcome!

Trust me, I just tried changing all settings for PCI in the BIOS of my test machine. Couldn't repeat anything that looks like what you experienced. That machine is quite old, though, (P166).

What is your hardware specification? I would personally hunt around in the BIOS settings to see if anything helps.

A WORD OF CAUTION: Remember what settings you change in your BIOS and what the previous value was! Otherwise you could end up with an expensive door-stop. :(

Good luck!
Martin

I should have said that I have tried changing many things in the BIOS.
I even stripped out all the PCI cards, took the system down to the bare minimum...........
Athlon 2400+
768 pc2100 ram
2 gig hd
NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 graphix
LG HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE8400B

Still I get to this point

PCI: 00:03.2 PCI cache line size set incorrectly (32 bytes) by BIOS/FW
PCI: 00:03.2 cache line size too large - expecting 16

What does this error message mean?

PCI: 00:03.2 PCI cache line size set incorrectly (32 bytes) by BIOS/FW
This line says the "PCI cache line size" is wrong (obviously). The PCI cache line size is set by the BIOS on boot and it has to do with Memory Writes (a PCI busmaster or something concurrent write caching thing I think). Some drivers try to correct the error.

PCI: 00:03.2 cache line size too large - expecting 16
This line unfortunately means it failed, the "good" line would read something like "setting size to x bytes".

"00:03.2" is the address of the offending device. I've seen reports from SIS, VIA and NEC products, either USB2 or PCI devices. Are there any lines preceeding this that have that address? Would make it easier to figure out. Did you try booting with "everything off" settings like resetting ALL the BIOS settings to their most conservative settings, no PnP, and trying to boot the kernel with all options you can find to "dumb down" like "noapic pci=off apm-off" etc etc (should be in the manual or expert mode description)?

I turned off the usb in the bios.
That took me past that particular error.
Now the installation is freezing at another point.
The problem this time is the screen goes blank so I don't know what the problem is.
The last thing that happens is;

starting x server

or something like that, there is more text but the screen goes blank so I have no idea what's going wrong.

Any ideas anyone?

Good to hear that you solved that first problem. Believe me, I tried changing virtually everything in the BIOS of my Athlon XP machine without being able to repeat the problem.

Try installing in text mode. Type 'linux text' at the first prompt during install.

This could be an issue with drivers for your graphics card. One more thing, sometime during installation you have an option for graphical login or text login. It would save us all some headache ;) if you choose text login. That can be changed back later if you'd prefer graphical login.

Good luck!
Martin

Did that mate
And it worked.
Now I have to go out and buy a bigger hard drive as I can't install on this 2GB one that I bought to take me from dos to win95.

And they say that windows is bloatware........lol

So now that I have had to turn off the usb support in the bios.....
How do I use my cable modem (motorola sb4200) which uses the usb connection.

What motherboard do you have?

If it's a VIA-based board, the chipset may have a PCI latency issue, which might be triggering your problem.

There's a patch available (see here that might help...

The make of the motherboard would also let us determine where you might go for an updated BIOS -- the problem(s) might be resolved with a BIOS flash.

what can i do about his problem if my system uses only usb keyb and mouse? i cant disable these can i?