Redhat 7.2 install problem

[mofficer]

I'm a pretty new newbie to linux. I just downloaded Redhat 7.2 disk images and installed them on a clean hd. (Athlon 800, Quantum 6 Gb, 512kb Ram, NVIDIA TNT2)

Install went without a hitch, but on first boot I got a message a lot like this one (this isn't my actual message because I had no way to copy it directly and was too lazy to write it out so I found the closest one I could on a forum, but there was no help there):

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000003b
printing eip:
c026a16c
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0000
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c026a16c>]
EFLAGS: 00010202
eax: ffffffff ebx: f7fbf000 ecx: 00000000 edx: 0000001f
esi: c1efffa4 edi: f7fbf284 ebp: 00000000 esp: c1effcb0
ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Process swapper (pid: 1, stackpage=c1eff000)
Stack: 0000001f 00000007 f7fbf000 c1efffa4 c0396955 c0396999 f7fbf000
00000000
00000000 c1effd20 c5571045 c0396a10 c1effd20 00000000 c1effd20
00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 c1ef8390 00000000 c0396ae2 c1effd20
c1ef8390
Call Trace: [<c0105000>] [<c01050e7>] [<c0105593>]

Code: 8a 40 3c 25 ff 00 00 00 50 68 b6 15 33 c0 8d b3 64 02 00 00
Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!

A friend told me it might be curruption on the disk images i downloaded, but wanted a second opinion before going through all that again.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[JimH]

Boot with the "noathlon" option. At the boot prompt type:

linux noathlon

Read the release notes on CD 1'
From the release notes:

- Red Hat Linux will install a kernel optimized for Athlon processors on systems with an Athlon-class CPU. Due to the optimization, this will put a greater load on the system components. Therefore, a very small number of machines may fail to boot as a result of the hardware not strictly conforming with AMD's specifications and thus being unable to cope with the load. On such systems, you can either upgrade the hardware (under-powered power supply units can cause this) or use the rescue capability of the installer to install an i686 kernel.

- Some Athlon-class machines are out-of-spec or have overly aggressive chipset configurations set by their BIOS. On these systems, you may see random "Oops" messages at boot time (after successfully completing the install process) and will be unable to boot successfully. On these systems, boot with the "noathlon" option to turn off the athlon optimizations; install the 686 kernel instead of the athlon kernel to avoid this for the future.

Jim H

[mofficer]

Thanks for the quick help man. I'm getting ready to give it a try and will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again

[mofficer]

Worked perfectly. I'm writing this from netscape in my first successful install of Linux. Thank a lot man.

m

[JimH]

Worked perfectly. I'm writing this from netscape in my first successful install of Linux. Thank a lot man.

m

Cool and welcome to the world of Linux. ;D

Jim H