Well, I installed RH 7.2, and upon loading I get a nice little "Kernel Panic" message. It's disabiling the "interrupt holder"? I tried 3 different installations, and this one is set to "Workstation". It seem's that it is not installing everything. I get a lot of "Command not Found" messages, and 2 kernel panics. I can't tell what the first one says though. Any ideas? I'm using an ATX mobo, with JUST the standard hardware to run the thing. ( CD-ROM, HDD, FDD, Video card, PS/2 mouse & keyboard. ) Ok, I was told there was a problem with the 7.2 kernel, and AMD processors. What is the GRUB command to get into RH to update my kernel?

For the AMD problem, are you referring to the linux mem=nopentium command?

An 'interrupt holder' could be a number of things; probably it doesn't like some aspect of your motherboard. If you could post the exact kernel panic error message. Usually in the format:

item:argggghhhhhhhh (the item is important)

Changing the installation won't change anything as RedHat is only ever going to install the 1 kernel on your machine no matter what other packages you've installed... which haven't had a chance to run yet as the kernel panics before it even inits them.

The problem with the '7.2 kernel', which really refers to kernel 2.4.7, would not happen on a default install as it only tends to creep up when the kernel is recompiled to optimize for AMD k7 architecture. RedHat's shipping default kernel is much more generic than that. It also will only strike when X is running, which you haven't gotten to yet.

You won't be able to update the kernel without having the machine running which it can't do without a working kernel. There are ways to hotload Linux into RAM and de-bug whatever is causing the kernel panic, but that panic message is the most important part.

Cheers,

Finegan

actually... i think it's usually

"aiiiiieeeee"

- then something about killing the interrupt handler in cold blood.

My favorite is still a screen full of:

eth0: Something Wicked Happened!!!

just better than:

Unknown UID, You Do Not Exist, Go Away!

Cheers,

Finegan

I got basically the same thing and though i'm not nearly done digging through this forum for a solution I thought I'd toss my two cents into this thread. I'm in the long and intricate process of attempting to install Redhat 7.1. When I boot from the cd, I get the error:

VFS: Cannot Open root device "" or 08:41
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:41

Yet when I try to enter the installation from MS-DOS I get something very similar to what that guy was talking about:

Code 03 4a 0c 8b 1d 6c ac 22 c0 8b 11 01 c3 f7 c2 01 00 00 00 74
Kernel panic: Aiee, Killing interrupt handler!
In interrupt handle - not syncing

Any guidance would be appriciated, and I hope this helps clarify.

The root device for the installation process of RedHat is almost certainly the CD itself. This usually means 1 of 3 things: Bad CD, which happens a lot more often then you would think if its an ISO burn, The CD-rom is kazoo, which is very rare, or the CDrom is jumpered funky so that the device the CDrom is assigned by the kernel is different than the one that BIOS reported. Or, possibly #4, something more bizarrely inexplicable.

Cheers,

Finegan

Okay, with an option of:
root=/dev/hdb1
(which is not really what i wanted to use at all, but oh well)
I managed to get the installer to proceed past the point at which it usually dies. (the unable to mount fs error). However, this just gets me up to the interrupt handler error that I got from the Dos installation.

Also, is there someplace I can look up that string of error codes it gave me to narrow down the problem, or should I just presume that that knowledge is sacred/unattainable?

Thanks again,
Skeeter

Yeah, and not to be glib, but, the source

Cheers,

Finegan

Ok I got it. :P On the 2nd line in the 2.4.7 kernel in GRUB, I added "noathon" at the end of the line, and boom! All good now. Now I'm just having trouble with installing the NVidia drivers with 2.4.9, and from what I've heard so far, it's not rare.

noathlon

You're kidding me... weird. Yeah, the Nvidia thing has been tackled through this forum basically since the day 7.2 came out, search through the forums man, you won't be disapointed.

Cheers,

Finegan

Finally got it going! Works great!! I just did the tarball installation, and everything went very well! Thanx everybody!

I built a fleet of RedHat 7.2 workstations recently, and experienced the same deal on of the systems. Different kernel panics, at varying stages of the boot process. "noathlon" fixed the problem, although severe disk correuption followed. I ended up flinging the Aopen all-in-one mobo and that was that. As the RedHat docos say, some AMD mobos/hardware combos do have trouble running the Athlon only code. It has to do with the name "VIA" I am sure.

The offending mobo was replaced with a "cheap" Matsonic (SiS) all-in-one, quite a rockin little mobo actually.

i have an athlon and nvidia - yet never had the agp problem. i feel left out.

I got the same problem: I'm using a mobo with the VIA 82C686B chipset, and I have kernel panics all over the place. Sometimes, it'll boot and work for 3-4 minutes before the kernel panics come up.

Anyway, you've mentioned that the RedHat docs say that some AMD/VIA mobos have problems when "noathlon" is not used. Could you possibly please point me to those docs? I just can't seem to find them.

Thanks!