Hardware: Dell Inspiron 4100 with one 1.0Ghz Pentium III Mobile, ATI Radeon Mobile (16 Mb), 256 Mb memory, 20 Gb disc, etc. Has a PIIX-4. Software: SuSE v7.3 generic kernel (2.4.10 with good SuSE hacks). Also kernel 2.4.16 and self-compiled 2.4.10 (with CONFIG_X86_UP_APIC and CONFIG_X86_LOCAL_APIC turned on). Issue: Affected kernels hang at non-repeatable places about 20 secs into the boot process. URL: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc/insp4100/kernel/apic.html (for config, boot messages, etc) It always dies; just the place is variable. The hang occurs as early as fsck (if it's actually checking the FS), or later when one or another daemon is starting. Boot messages indicate that the APIC was recognized and initialized. If a kernel is built whose configuration differs only in omitting CONFIG_X86_UP_APIC (with the consequence that CONFIG_X86_LOCAL_APIC is also omitted), the kernel will work perfectly (tested for 2.4.16). CONFIG_X86_UP_IOAPIC was not set and there is no evidence one way or the other about the I/O APIC. During SuSE 7.3 installation (i.e. boot from the included floppy, not using YaST2 on the original system to upgrade), the system will stay up longer than 20 secs but dies within 5 minutes. No exceptions. Booting with the noapic parameter does not suppress the freeze. (This test was with the rescue system booted off the CD.) When it's hung, the magic SysRq key has no effect, and you can't ping a system whose Ethernet connection was functioning just before the hang. However, the APM BIOS is able to turn on the fan. It would appear that the machine is in an infinite loop that uses CPU electrical resources. I'm trying to install SuSE 7.3. Since the generic kernel won't run, my workaround will be to use YaST2 in the 7.2 background to ``upgrade'' the system to 7.3. I will back up the 2.4.4 kernel and modules, and will reject its offer to run LILO. If that doesn't work, I will hardwire CD support into the kernel (so no modules are needed to boot), extract the initrd off the CD onto the root hard disc partition, and set up a LILO stanza which uses that initrd with my own kernel. Crossposted to: SuSE customer support; Ingo Molnar (author in ./arch/i386/kernel/apic.c); SuSE laptops and Dell-laptops mailing lists. Mainly this is "for your information" in case others are in a similar situation as me. If help is needed testing kernel patches I'll be happy to oblige (contact me directly by mail), but I don't know nothing about APICs... (Nor have I figured out how to get a register dump of the infinite loop.) Sorry to write in English, but I can just barely handle the subscription messages :-( Now if it were French... I have a feeling I'm going to be banging on Babelfish a lot in the near future. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)