X7DBR woes, was Re: FAI kernel won't boot on certain boxes

[Steffen Grunewald]

On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 06:38:49PM +0200, Thomas Lange wrote:
> >>>>> On Wed, 09 May 2007 18:12:43 +0200, Frank Doepper <fd at taz.de> said:
> 
>     > But both, the out-of-the-box kernel and the self-compiled kernel, won't
>     > boot on a certain variant of "transtec" Intel Celeron PC. It says
>     > "Loading vmlinuz-install......Ready." and dies.
> Mmm. Which variant?
> I only know of problems with some e1000 cards, where the fai
> kernels hangs when doing DHCP request.

Since I'm trying to debug one of my servers too, this might be useful to 
someone:

Machine is transtec, X7DBR based, dual Woodcrest 5060. First disk is 
vanilla SATA, three others connected to 3ware 9500S as RAID. There's 
a SIMSO+ IPMI card, connected to its own ethernet port.

Using the Debian Etch Multi-Arch netinstall CD, I can setup a full system
(all software options selected) without any problems, no difference whether
I use eth0 or eth1.

If I try to FAI install, I get MD5sum errors from random packages.
If I try to FAI sysinfo, the machine sends back result files (often incomplete)
and dies instead of waiting for RETURN (in both cases, there is no "reboot"
in the FAI commandline).

Etch netinstall uses version 7.1.9 of the Intel/PRO1000 driver while FAI
kernel 2.6.18-4 already has a higher number.
I tried to use my own homegrown 2.6.21.1 FAI kernel but there seems to be
no big difference.

Is there a hardware bug known with this particular board?

Is there an archive of "old" FAI kernels, and which e1000 drivers do these
use?

Cheers,
 Steffen

-- 
Steffen Grunewald * MPI Grav.Phys.(AEI) * Am Mühlenberg 1, D-14476 Potsdam
Cluster Admin * http://pandora.aei.mpg.de/merlin/ * http://www.aei.mpg.de/
* e-mail: steffen.grunewald(*)aei.mpg.de * +49-331-567-{fon:7233,fax:7298}
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