[SOLVED] Fedora 17 "maxcpus=1" install parameter and grub not loading

[tossman101]

Alright so I had a hell of a time getting the Fedora 17 installation DVD to get past a grey screen with a blinking white cursor. The only way I could do it was by loading the basic graphics installation mode and adding the maxcpus=1 parameter (found the suggestion in another general linux discussion board). I know it's telling the kernel to only use one CPU, I have an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz Six-Core, so I'm assuming the parameter told the kernel to only use one of those cores. My question is, if that is the case, will the installation I just finished only use one of my CPU's cores, or was that parameter only in effect for the installation? Also, now that the installation is complete and I try to boot the OS for the first time GRUB shows that it is loading, displays the Welcome to Grub! message and then just hangs there, I can't enter anything and no menu appears. I can however ctrl-alt-del to restart the machine. I had anaconda create Logical Volumes during the installation which I read can cause issues with Grub if it is installed there some how, but when I was asked to install the bootloader I kept it at default to install into the disk's MBR. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[george_toolan]

What kind of motherboard is this? Did you install the latest BIOS update?

Kernel parameters are only temporary and that's probably why it isn't booting.

But you should be able to find better BIOS settings or kernel parameters which allow to use more than one core.

Try ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppi...cheatcodes.txt

Remember knoppix is a different linux distribution, but most of the kernel parameters should be working with Fedora as well.

[tossman101]

I'm not at home right now so I can't give you the make and model number of the motherboard, but no I did not do any BIOS updates before I started the install. I did however try a re-install per a friends suggestion. After the installer finished and I rebooted the welcome to grub message appeared again and that was it, I had a paper to write so I just left the machine sit. About a hour and a half after the welcome to grub message was displayed, the grub menu flashed on the screen for a second and then I had a blank black screen for about a half hour before I saw the loading fedora kernel message. About two hours after that message was first displayed the loading initial ramdisk message was displayed, I went to bed two hours later and that is all the further it had gotten. Before I left this morning I check the machine, the loading initial ramdisk message was still the last message displayed, but the machine had completely frozen, pressing Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, or Num Lock was not was not responding on the keyboard at all. So that's where I'm at right now.

[tossman101]

Ok here are my specs:
MSI 790GX-G65 Mobo
AMI BIOS version 4.0 12172009
AMD Phenom II Thuban Six-Core
4x750 GB Western Digital Sata drives in a RAID 5 array (this has my old os on it [ubuntu] and all my data) I'm not trying to create a dual-boot system, once I have Fedora up and running I plan on backing up what I want to save and breaking the array to rebuild it in Fedora
500 GB Seagate Sata drive (Fedora drive)
16 GB of RAM
a Serial ATA Controller card
LG DVD combo drive (this is connected to the controller card)
and an EVGA GeForce GTX 560 TI video card

All the hard drives are connected directly to the motherboard but right now I only have the Seagate drive actually attached. Since my last post, grub now loads like it should, quickly, and displays the boot menu (Fedora and advanced boot options). All options quickly show the Booting `Fedora Linux'

Loading Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...
lines of text and then the system freezes. Ctrl+Alt+Del does not do anything, as well as pressing any of the Lock keys.

[tossman101]

So it hit me last night as I wrote the last post that there could be something wrong with my RAM so I rang the Memtest86+ that comes on the Fedora install disk and sure enough I have an error, that's pretty early in the memory table. From what I've been told about the way Linux loads itself into RAM this is probably my problem. I will start switching the sticks out to find the bad one to replace it.

[tossman101]

Had a friend come over to help. It seems that my CPU was only running at 800MHZ. He did a few things in BIOS, didn't quite catch everything he did (he works fast), but I know he ended up having to change the multiplier. I'm up and running now, having some minor issues but I'm chalking them up to me simply getting ahead of myself.