Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On 10/21/06, Donald E Tripp <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I have a supermicro board based server that freezes at "freeing unused 
>> kernel memory" on SL43 using pxeboot. Any ideas?
> 
> Make sure the system BIOS is the latest stable version for that 
> motherboard.
> 
> Have the boot lines try noapic or apci=off. If those work then there
> is probably a motherboard issue with the IRQ routing causing ti to
> crash out.
> 
>>
>> - Don
>>
> 
> 

Also, give it some time.
I've had several people say that their machine freezes at this point, 
and usually the computer is doing something in the background.  After 
10-15 minutes it returns.  It usually is only a one time thing also.
What is it doing?
Well, the most common thing is that the output is being redirected to 
the serial console.  At that point "freeing unused kernel memory" is 
when *everything* is being re-directed to the serial console so you 
don't see anything until the machine is completely up and you get a 
console prompt.
But when it's taking so long (more than 30 seconds), then people think 
the machine is frozen, they reboot it, which then means it's going to do 
a scan of your disks, which takes an even longer time, so then they sit 
there for 5 minutes, and think, oh, it's frozen, reboot again, and the 
cycle continutes.
It's usually when they see it frozen, give up, go to lunch, come back, 
and then magically everything is fixed and they don't know why.
(As a side note, this most often happens when people select *install 
everything*)

Now true, there might be something actually hanging, and the advice that 
Stephen gave will actually work.  That's often what the problem is for 
the time's there really is a problem.

Troy
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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/CSS  CSI Group
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