Kernel Panic on Dell Poweredge 2850

[josh2asl]

ASL installed without a hitch, but won't boot the kernel. I've tried the suggestions under the panic wiki with no success. I'm wondering if anyone else is successfully running asl on a 2850 w/ Perc 4e/di Raid Card. If not, any suggestions? Below is some info that I figured people would ask for.

[root@web-01 /]# cat /etc/modprobe.conf alias eth0 e1000 alias eth1 e1000 alias scsi_hostadapter megaraid_mbox

[root@web-01 /]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation E7520 Memory Controller Hub (rev 09) 00:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation E7525/E7520/E7320 PCI Express Port A (rev 09) 00:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation E7525/E7520 PCI Express Port B (rev 09) 00:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation E7520 PCI Express Port B1 (rev 09) 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation E7520 PCI Express Port C (rev 09) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02) 01:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 80332 [Dobson] I/O processor (A-Segment Bridge) (rev 06)
01:00.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 80332 [Dobson] I/O processor (B-Segment Bridge) (rev 06) 02:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID controller 4 (rev 06) 05:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6700PXH PCI Express-to-PCI Bridge A (rev 09)
05:00.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6700PXH PCI Express-to-PCI Bridge B (rev 09) 06:07.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82541GI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 05) 07:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82541GI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 05) 08:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6700PXH PCI Express-to-PCI Bridge A (rev 09)
08:00.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6700PXH PCI Express-to-PCI Bridge B (rev 09) 0b:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]

[root@web-01 /]# lsmod
Module Size Used by
ip_conntrack_netbios_ns 6977 0
iptable_nat 11205 0
ip_nat 20973 1 iptable_nat
iptable_mangle 6849 0
ipt_REJECT 9537 1
xt_state 6209 4
ip_conntrack 53025 4 ip_conntrack_netbios_ns,iptable_nat,ip_nat,xt_state
nfnetlink 10713 2 ip_nat,ip_conntrack
iptable_filter 7105 1
ip_tables 17029 3 iptable_nat,iptable_mangle,iptable_filter
ip6t_REJECT 9409 1
xt_tcpudp 7105 17
ip6table_filter 6849 1
ip6_tables 18053 1 ip6table_filter
x_tables 17349 7 iptable_nat,ipt_REJECT,xt_state,ip_tables,ip6t_REJECT,xt_tcpudp,ip6_tables
ipv6 258145 25 ip6t_REJECT
xfrm_nalgo 13765 1 ipv6
crypto_api 11969 1 xfrm_nalgo
dm_mirror 29253 0
dm_multipath 22089 0
dm_mod 61661 2 dm_mirror,dm_multipath
video 21193 0
sbs 18533 0
backlight 10049 1 video
i2c_ec 9025 1 sbs
i2c_core 23745 1 i2c_ec
button 10705 0
battery 13637 0
asus_acpi 19289 0
ac 9157 0
parport_pc 29157 0
lp 15849 0
parport 37513 2 parport_pc,lp
ata_piix 22341 0
libata 144125 1 ata_piix
ide_cd 40033 0
floppy 57125 0
sg 36189 0
serio_raw 10693 0
cdrom 36705 1 ide_cd
e752x_edac 14277 0
e1000 114641 0
edac_mc 26257 1 e752x_edac
pcspkr 7105 0
megaraid_mbox 33745 3
sd_mod 24897 4
scsi_mod 134605 4 libata,sg,megaraid_mbox,sd_mod
megaraid_mm 14689 1 megaraid_mbox
ext3 123593 2
jbd 56553 1 ext3
uhci_hcd 25421 0
ohci_hcd 23261 0
ehci_hcd 33357 0

[scott]

Ah PERC card huh... the veritable "lowest bidder" of the hardware RAID world. That is a flash problem, Dell in their infinite wisdom, likes to do all kinds of silly things with them and in so doing, broke compatiblity by violating the RAID standards. Hooray!

Anyway, its a crap shoot with those things. IF they released newer firmware for it, and they rarely do unless you complain constantly, you can update it to work with kernels newer than 2.6.19. If they didn't then Im afraid you wont be able to use it with anything modern and will have to roll back to 2.6.19.

Honestly on the 50 or so Dell's using PERC's Ive worked with in the last year, only 5 or 6 of them actually had firmware available to work with the newer kernels. The others had varying forms of problems. Worst case it wiped out the entire (stupid... proprietary) RAID container.

[josh2asl]

Yep, thats what it was. there was an october 2007 firmware update that i tried but no success-rolled back to 2.6.19 and it loaded that kernel no problem.

I rolled back by removing the art kernel i had installed, and yumming the specific 2.6.19 kernel. now that i have that set as the default kernel, is there a nice and easy way to prevent accidentally overwriting it with a yum update? i dont want asl to update it behind my back, or accidently update it myself so would like to hard code it to the "no touchy" category.

[breun]

See yum's exclude option. You can add exclude=kernel to the yum channels that you don't want to take kernel updates from.