hello, this issue is similiar to a discussion that has taken place on the suse-amd64 list. basicly the system fails to boot either of the smp kernels if more then 2gb of memory is installed, unless kernel parameters are given at boot. System Config. SuSE 9.0 - k_smp-2.4.21-99 and or k_smp-2.4.21-166 Penguin Computing Relion 140 2x 3.06Gb Xeon w/533FSB 6Gb PC2100 ECC DDR LSI 320-1: 1 channel MegaRAID controller 2x 36Gb seagate SCA drives if the systems has > 2gb of memory the kernel panics claiming it can find initrd or it just hangs when "Freeing unused kernel memory:". if the system has 4gb of memory i have to set the kernel parameters 'mem=4gb iommu=force' or i get the kernel panic or hang up. if the system has 6gb of memory the boot fails as above when i set 'mem=6gb iommu=force', i have to set mem=4gb to or less for the machine so successfully boot. which renders 2gb of memory unavialable. also, this appears to be a SuSE problem, or at least a SuSE 9.0 problem. i've installed redhat ES 3.0 on this machine and everything works fine with the 2.4.21-4.ELsmp kernel. this kernel has CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G and CONFIG_HIGHMEM turned on, as does the suse kernel. i can include the kernel config for the redhat kernel if anyone is interested. -- Darin Perusich Unix Systems Administrator Cognigen Corp. darinper@cognigencorp.com