Red Hat 8

Zarathustra · Oct 16, 2002, 11:43 PM

Any experiences with RH8? I have installed it about 5 times so far on my designated *nix box and have had nothing but troubles

All problems are centered around the CD drive. I first installed with a CD-RW in the system, so of course ide-scsi was used as the cd module. Every few seconds EVERY and I mean every running process sequentially would try to access the CD-RW drive. So the system would halt every 5 seconds or so to update the system log with tons of entries such as this one:

Quote:

Oct 16 13:23:33 localhost kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 55, scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 Prevent/Allow Medium Removal 00 00 00 01 00
Oct 16 13:23:33 localhost kernel: SCSI host 0 abort (pid 55) timed out - resetting
Oct 16 13:23:33 localhost kernel: SCSI bus is being reset for host 0 channel 0.

Oh yeah the system was perfect without a CD drive at all plugged in. So I try swapping cables, no effect. I try swapping the CD-RW for a regular CD-ROM. The problem lessens, but is still there. In a fit of rage I do a little init 1 and then rmmod ide-scsi. Of course since ALL processes were accessing the CD, the ide-scsi module is too busy to kill. But somehow the kernel ends it anyway and a few seconds later the kernel crashed from the interrupt handler dying. Ughhhh. I now reinstall (yet again) but do it from the CD-ROM now. ide-scsi doesn't get used now. The system is no longer so busy I can barely move the mouse cursor, but it's still spitting out CD errors. It now changes to:

Quote:

Oct 16 18:50:01 penguin kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Oct 16 18:50:01 penguin kernel: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x34
Oct 16 18:50:11 penguin kernel: hdc: lost interrupt

Ok fine, sounds like DMA needs to be disabled. I kill DMA for the CD-ROM (and the harddrives to be safe) and nothing changes. I can actually access the CD-ROM now from inside the system but it only takes an hour, no joke. Both CD drives I've tried work flawlessly in 98SE which I have installed on the same box. I have no idea what else to try here. Help

Oh yeah system specs are Abit BH6, P3-750, 512mb ECC, GF2 GTS, Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 (which doesn't get detected at all), Gravis UltraSound PnP Pro, 13gb Maxtor (hda, ext3), 8gb IBM (hdb, FAT), 40x Samsung or 8x4x24 HP 9100i.

UberLord · Oct 17, 2002, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zarathustra
Gravis UltraSound PnP Pro

That was one kick ass sound card in it's day - beat everything else hands down. Except that its crappy windows drivers killed it :/

As to the CD problem I've got no solution

I had a similar problem using RH with a SCSI card - all the devices reported similar errors and stuff. Mandrake never gave me this hassle. I'm not saying that using Mandrake will cure the errors though.

You get this with other distros on the same rig?

Zarathustra · Oct 17, 2002, 03:03 PM

Yes the GUS rules. I have it in there for old ass demos that had enhanced versions just for the GUS

I never noticed any problems in older RH distros and under Debian or FreeBSD. Mandrake is just too damn easy, so I want to stay away from it