I pulled the node, checked everything, cleaned ram and card connections, and re-installed it. PXE booted with kvm attached and watched virtual consoles. It is indeed doing other stuff on the other virtual consoles, but nothing significant is reported. Also, I let it sit all night, came back a few minutes ago, and it was stuck where I left it last night. I just replaced that node. I'll try taking it totally apart and see what I can find.
- Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Troy Dawson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, October 23, 2006 3:53 am
Subject: Re: freeing kernel memory
To: Donald E Tripp <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask]
> 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
> --
> __________________________________________________
> Troy Dawson [log in to unmask] (630)840-6468
> Fermilab ComputingDivision/CSS CSI Group
> __________________________________________________
>
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