On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, BobF wrote:

I hope someone can help me with this one. I have come from Free BSD to SuSe 6.3 with the hope that the SMP support is better with Linux. So far I am not having much luck. Here is my hardware: ABIT BP6 mb 2 Celeron 500MHz 3.2 and 6.4 WD hd on ide 0 atapi cdr and atapi cdrw on ide 1 20g udma66 WD hd on HPT66 controller (ide2) Voodoo Banshee AGP video External 56k modem on sio1 3com 905c on pci bus

The problem: If I enable the nic on eth0 the boot process stalls at some random point-

Since your lock-ups are occuring at *random, different* points in the boot process, my intuition would point at flakey hardware. You've got quite a mix of different pieces, so it would be challenging to track down a faulty component. The way that I would proceed is to simplify the hardware mix as much as possible - take your system down to the motherboard, video controller, processors, memory and as *few* drives as you need - if your SuSE is all on one hard drive, just use that one. Then, start building it back up, one piece at a time. When it fails, you've found the culprit. By "enable the nic" do you mean in software or by physically removing it? You might try starting the trouble shooting there. You also did not mention your memory configuration, or power situation. I've seen lame memory and weak power supplies be the primary causes of random locks. If you have multiple pieces of RAM in your box, try juggling/swapping/taking out all but one piece to see if you can isolate a problem. Got a UPS on this box? I'm not familiar with the ABIT BP6, but this does *not* sound to me like the symptoms of a LILO/LARGE_EBDA SMP problem. Systems that show that usually hang on uncompressing the kernel, from what I have seen. Just to check - is this all tested hardware? Overclocked CPU's? 66 MHz memory in a 100 MHz FSB? Failed CPU fan? Anything else that might be wacky? BTW - welcome to linux! I think you'll find that the pace of development is *much* faster on this side of the street... -- The world's as ugly as sin, And almost as delightful -- Frederick Locker-Lampson -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/

Problem solved. Cause: Interrupt 11 was being used by both ide2 and eth0. I found this by doing "cat /proc/interrupts" from command line. Solution: Move the card on the pci bus 1 slot over. Thanks to those who offered suggestions :-)) I had a suspicion that it had to do with interrupts from many problems with FreeBSD and SMP interrupt handling. I am posting this to give someone else the benefit of my frustration and aggravation (if they do a search of the m/l archives) Sorry to take up the bandwidth and mail space. On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, I wrote:

I hope someone can help me with this one. I have come from Free BSD to SuSe 6.3 with the hope that the SMP support is better with Linux. So far I am not having much luck. Here is my hardware: ABIT BP6 mb 2 Celeron 500MHz 3.2 and 6.4 WD hd on ide 0 atapi cdr and atapi cdrw on ide 1 20g udma66 WD hd on HPT66 controller (ide2) Voodoo Banshee AGP video External 56k modem on sio1 3com 905c on pci bus

The problem: If I enable the nic on eth0 the boot process stalls at some random point- one time at "starting syslog services" next time "initializing SMTP port" and "starting console mouse support (gpm):" The system is wedged hard- requires a reset. Nothing else will respond. I have then booted with the cd(#2) and everything seems to run OK but only on one processor. Very frustrating. I have been messing with this for 4 days now and have run out of ideas. Please be simplistic with your responses- I have a Unix and Free BSD background but only 4 days of Linux experience :-)

Bob F EMail- FBob@WT.Net -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/