Installation guide

Chapter 14. Troubleshooting

Installation on an IBM POWER

System

This appendix discusses some common installation problems and their solutions.

You may also find the IBM Online Alert Section for System p and System i useful. It is located

at:

http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/lopdiags/info/LinuxAlerts.html

Please note that the url above has been split across two lines for readability. It should be

entered into a browser as one continuous line, with no linebreak.

1. You are Unable to Boot Red Hat Enter-

prise Linux

1.1. Is Your System Displaying Signal 11 Errors?

A signal 11 error, commonly know as a segmentation fault, means that the program accessed a

memory location that was not assigned to it. A signal 11 error may be due to a bug in one of the

software programs that is installed, or faulty hardware.

If you receive a fatal signal 11 error during your installation, it is probably due to a hardware er-

ror in memory on your system's bus. Like other operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux

places its own demands on your system's hardware. Some of this hardware may not be able to

meet those demands, even if they work properly under another OS.

Ensure that you have the latest installation updates and images from Red Hat. Review the on-

line errata to see if newer versions are available. If the latest images still fail, it may be due to a

problem with your hardware. Commonly, these errors are in your memory or CPU-cache. A pos-

sible solution for this error is turning off the CPU-cache in the BIOS, if your system supports

this. You could also try to swap your memory around in the motherboard slots to check if the

problem is either slot or memory related.

Another option is to perform a media check on your installation CD-ROMs. The Red Hat Enter-

prise Linux installation program has the ability to test the integrity of the installation media. It

works with the CD, DVD, hard drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods. Red Hat recom-

mends that you test all installation media before starting the installation process, and before re-

porting any installation-related bugs (many of the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-

burned CDs). To use this test, type the following command at the boot: or yaboot: prompt

(prepend with elilo for Itanium systems):

linux mediacheck

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