[Gllug] Kernel Panic and 8G Limit in BIOS

[Ken Smith]

Hi All,

I'm a fairly new subscriber to this list - so this is my first post. I have
been using Red Hat Linux on a lightly loaded server and been experimenting
with it as a desktop environment for 2-3 years now.

Enough introductions...now my question. I recently had a disk failure on an
elderly P166 PC running RH 7.2. It's true what that say - Linux runs until
the hardware fails! I replaced the disk with a 20G I had, even though the
BIOS could only see 8 G of this drive. System was rebuilt from RH 7.2 CD's
and my backup was restored and its all running fine. To my surprise RH 7.2
system could see all 20G of the disk.

The system runs Kernel 2.4.7-10 perfectly but when I have applied updates
from RHN and boot 2.4.20-* I get a Kernel panic at boot up - as follows...

EIP is at [unresolved]
{Register Dump}
process swapper (pid:1, stackpage={hex number})
CallTrace

Ide_config_drive_speed
Probe_hwif
Ideprobe_init
stext
Init
Stext
arch_kernel_thread
init

Code: Bad EIP Value

<0> Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init


My own explanation is that the later kernels are getting tripped up by the
BIOS not being able to see beyond 8G. The system has a RH server style
partitioning scheme with / in hda5 and /boot is in hda1. hda5 is probably
beyond the 8G point and can't be seen when the BIOS limitations are in
force. I don't know when in the boot procedure Linux stops using the BIOS to
access the disks and loads its own drivers. 

Am I on the right track? If this is the case them I guess I could stick with
2.4.7 for now until I replace that machine with something else. Or I could
make the system have one large partition that contains the whole filesystem
or change the partitions around so that / and /boot are within the 8G limit.
I could upgrade the BIOS, but the machine is so old I doubt that a new BIOS
that will see beyond 8G is available. 

Any confirmations on this 'feature' of Kernels > 2.4.7 or ideas for simple
fixes?

Thanks in advance

Ken





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