kpanic on install >32GB of RAM

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 12:52:00PM -0700, Sean Bruno wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 09:38 -0700, Sean Bruno wrote:
> > On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 09:30 -0700, Boris Kochergin wrote:
> > > On 10/15/10 12:27, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 09:04:53AM -0700, Sean Bruno wrote:
> > > >> So, trying to get a massively overpowered HP box up with 7.3 amd64
> > > >> version up and running.
> > > >>
> > > >> I can't tell at the moment, but it looks like the installer kernel is
> > > >> having issues with>32GB of RAM in this box.
> > > >>
> > > >> Are we using the i386 kernel on amd64 installs?
> > > > If you booted a FreeBSD image that has "amd64" in the ISO name, then the
> > > > kernel is actually 64-bit (amd64).  The only i386 piece would be the
> > > > bootloader.
> > > >
> > > > There's probably someone here who can help with the issue you describe,
> > > > as there's occasional posts here and there from people who experience
> > > > issues/problems when using very large amounts of RAM.
> > > >
> > > I've got an amd64 machine with 48 GB of RAM that has run 7, 8, and now 
> > > 9, which leads me to believe that your issue is not solely related to 
> > > the amount of memory.
> > > 
> > > -Boris
> > > __________
> > 
> > Edge case at 64G perhaps?  That's the minimum you can get in the HP
> > DL980 apparently.
> > 
> > Sean
> 
> Hrm, no success today setting available RAM to 32G and reducing the
> number of processors to 8.
> 
> I've disabled and tweaked pretty much everything available to me here
> and have tried to boot up the fbsd 8 install media with the same result
> as using the fbsd 7 media:  Repeated and continuous panics on all
> processors simultaneously after selecting install method from the boot
> menu.
> 
> Not sure what to do at this point to get the system up and running.
> Suggestions?

Can you boot a Linux liveCD installation of some sort for comparison?
That would possibly rule out OS vs. hardware/BIOS ordeals.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |