Im using Slackware 10 and decided to upgrade to 2.6.7 kernel. After installing the normal packages I had problems with my audigy 2 card, and network card (nforce 2 chipset) not working. So I decided to recompile the kernel from scratch. This sorta worked...my sound card worked, but the network card didnt. Forcedeth was loaded but it wasnt doing anything with the net card. So I decided to use nvidias net drivers, and this worked for me, however during hotplug init at bootup my computer locks up. When i disable hotplug from startup, my machine boots fine (minus the missing hardware that hotplug would normally load), however if i try to start hotplug manually it locks up.

I thought it was possibley the forcdeth module clashing with nvidias drivers, so input forcdeth in the hotplug ban list but this hasnt worked. I am stumped. This must be a nforce 2 issue. I've googled this one for a long time with out prevail. Any help will be appreciated, and any further information I will be quick to provide.

Thanks

*although im not a newbie, troubleshooting this type of thing in linux is new for me. So if you need me to post some log messages just let me know what and ill do it. Thanks for the help

So I've been playing around with this awhile now, and doing some studying on how hotplug works. I was finally able to get hotplug not to lock up my system at boot, however i noticed hotplug is disabling IRQ#11. Consequentlly my network card isnt working. Ill load forcedeth (i put the nvidia driver to rest) then run ifconfig and it shows eth1 as my netcard (eth0 is being used for my firewire card it appears) and it also shows that IRQ11 is assigned to my netcard.

So basically it appears that hotplug is disabling the IRQ that is being assigned to my netcard rendering it unusable. Would someone help me out with this please? If I can get a better understanding of how the hotplug system works and how the scripts need to be configured it would be a great learning experience.

Thanks

btw my 2.4.27 kernel works perfectly.

UPDATE: I went into the bios and started disabling ports on my computer that would be grabbing IRQs. I disabled things that im not using such as the gameport on my sound card, and the parallel port on my computer. This actually worked!!! (sort of). This time when i booted up HOTPLUG disabled IRQ5 instead of 11 (turns out its my midi port which I dont use). When everything booted up my essential hardware all works (audigy 2 card, graphics card, on board peripherals, and net card.

Im happy everything is working, but Im not satisfied. Why is HOTPLUG disabling ports?

STRANGLY folks...a simple BIOS update solved every problem. I know longer get an IRQ error with hotplug, hotplug stoped hanging up at boot, and IT SOLVED MY NVIDIA DRIVERS PROBLEM THAT OCCURED WHEN I TRIED USING NVIDIAS GRAPHIC DRIVERS!!!

Ok the normal NV drivers works with my geforce 4 ti4200 card perfectly, however those drivers dont have gl support. Installing NVIDIA's own drivers would not work under 2.6.7 kernel it just caused the BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH.....it would just hang at a black screen as X began to load. I searched for hours today trying to resolve this but nothing!!! SOOO many people with the same problem, yet no solutions except that nvidia has buggy drivers.

So from experience i know linux is very sensitive with computer hardware...the smallest "jumper on a motherboard" could wack out a system. My experiment worked. Just a simple bios update resolved my issues with my 2.6.7 kernel upgrade. Coincedence maybe, but at this point who cares.

I hope these posts help someone out! good luck.

For the record:

AMD 2600+ @ 2.1ghz 300mhz fsb
Asus A7n8x-x nforce 2 chipset (single channel)
2x256mb Ocsytem ddr300
MSI Geforce4 Ti 4200 64mb
Maxtor 160gb hd 8mb, 7200rpm
IBM 10gb slave drive
Plextor Premium 52x cdrw
Plextor px-708a dvdr
Slackware 10-2.6.7 recompiled kernel

For completness....I believe the bios update worked because it disabled ACPI in the bios.