kernel boot failure

Hello,
I just started working with an HP RX4610 (4
Itaniums, 16gb) running RedHat Linux. I wasn't present for the initial RH installation, but I understand it installed cleanly. It was running 2.4.9-18.

I installed an Emulex HBA and managed to compile
the driver modules against 2.4.18 (wouldn't compile against 2.4.9). So I went ahead and built a new 2.4.18 kernel, initrd, added both to elilo.conf, and rebooted. No luck; I tried twice to boot the new kernel but only got kicked back to the efi. I decided it was probably a problem with the initrd file, and tried to boot back to the 2.4.9 kernel. And got a kernel panic. Then tried the alternate uniprocessor kernel; no panic, but no boot either (output identical to first set of messages below). For a reality check I tried to boot from the installation CD, and it STILL hangs with the message: Error: only one processor found.
In desperation we re-formatted the scsi drives and tried again without success. We also tried booting the Windows Netserver CD, and it hangs as well (no messages of course).

So there must be a hardware or firmware problem
here. But before we begin swapping parts and/or upgrading the bios, I wrote down the boot messages leading to the hang (and panic in a separate case) in hopes someone here could shed some light on what stage of the boot process is failing (and maybe why).

Thanks,
Chris

ia64_mca_platform_init: corrected platform error vector 0x1e setup and enabled
MCA initialization done.

One node 0 totalpages:  1179647
zone(0):  262144 pages
zone(1):  0 pages
zone(2):  917503 pages
kernel command line:  BOOT_IMAGE=atapi0:/vmlinuz
ramdisk_size288 maxcpus=1 ro
fpswa interface at 47fee4010 ITC freq€0.222
CPU 0:  base freq3.370mhz, ITC ratio/2
Console:  color VGA+ 80X25

Calibrating delay loop...797.80 bogoMIPS Memory 16597424k/18874352k available (4006k code, 167232k reserved, 2802k data, 352k init) Dentry-cache hash table entries 1048576 (order: 10, 16777216 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries 1048576 (order 8, 4194384 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries 1048576 (order 9, 838608 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries 1048576 (order 8, 4194384 bytes)
POSIC conformance testing by UNIFIX
Boot processor id 0x0/0x200
Limiting CPUs to 1
SMP: starting up secondaries
Before bogomips.
Error: only one processor found

-------------------------------------

If I pass maxcpus=4 on the kernel command line, I get a kernel panic. Here are the decoded traces that I could see:

decoded to ia_64_leave_kernel [kernel] 0x0 bh_action [kernel] 0xe0
tasklet_hi_action [kernel] 0x250
do_softirq [kernel] 0x140
ia64_handle_irq [kernel] 0x100 ia64_leave_kernel [kernel] 0x0
do_boot_cpu [kernel] 0x4e0
smp_boot_cpus [kernel] 0x3e0
smp_init [kernel] 0x20
start_kernel [kernel] 0x460
start_ap [kernel] 0x160
kernel panic Aiee, killing interrupt handler In interrupt handler -- not syncing

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Chris> So there must be a hardware or firmware problem here.
Chris> But before we begin swapping parts and/or upgrading the bios, Chris> I wrote down the boot messages leading to the hang (and panic Chris> in a separate case) in hopes someone here could shed some Chris> light on what stage of the boot process is failing (and maybe Chris> why).

The "Error: only one processor found" message isn't a fatal error message (it really ought to say "Warning:...", but that's another story...). I don't recall seeing issues like the ones you describe. It does sound like it might be a hardware failure. Probably best to contact the hw support folks.

	--david