Purchased a MicroCenter PowerSpec MCE510 PC with an Intel Pentium D 805 2.66Ghz Processor w/ 1024KB x2 Full Speed L2 Cache.
The intent was to install the latest stable Fedora Core 5, however after probing the USB ports and heading to check out the IDE drives, the screen dumps a number of random characters and the kernel panics.
So, hard rebooting and backing off to Fedora Core 4, I get to the same point in the installation and discover this error message, which is unobscured:
Kernel panic – not syncing: drivers/ide/pci/atiixp.c:129: spin_lock(drivers/ide/ide.c:c03de668) already locked by drivers/ide/ide-iops.c/12. (Not tainted)
So, I back off and try Slackware 10, this seems to work.
Supposedly this problem existed in FC3, but was fixed. Dave Jones, however, points out this fix didn’t seem to make it up stream. It is curious to note that one comment says that this problem only happens when there is a DVD in the drive, not a CD. Sure enough, I have a DVD. (I have not tested this theory yet.)
I tried FC6-test, and that also had problems.
For now, I need to get work done, and will be using Slackware… however, I hope to revisit in the near future and see if I can find a work around.
UPDATE 08-Aug-2006: Found someone who claims they got a fix that worked — reburn the CD as slow as possible AND start the install with linux ide=nodma and someone else suggests adding noprobe as well. And, to date, only this comment of this thread seems to explain why this error happens. It seems to have been fixed in later kernels, but that poses a serious problem if you’re trying to install. In the voodoo category, someone says if you create an error in the boot prompt (like make it look for an image that doesn’t exist; e.g. type mediacheck), this somehow releases whatever lock it had, and then booting with linux mediacheck works; not many success reports on that solution. From what I can tell there are two threads: those who have FC installed and had a failure booting with an upgrades kernel (so they revert back and twiddle the source), and those who are trying to install Fedora in the first place.