[PlanetCCRMA] F8 on iMac won't boot

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 14:38 +0100, Michael Gurevich wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just installed F8 on a brand new iMac, following the outline on the 
> CCRMA wiki (http://cm-wiki.stanford.edu/wiki/MacTel_PlanetCCRMA) using 
> rEFit.
> 
> Everything went very smoothly until I installed PlanetCCRMA and tried to 
> boot the RT kernel (2.6.24.3-1.rt1.2.fc8.ccrmart). I can't offer much 
> detail about what's going on other that it doesn't even seem to begin to 
> boot. After selecting Linux from the rEFit boot menu, it gets as far as
> 
> Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
> i8042.c: No Controller found
> 
> and then nothing. I let it sit there for about 10 minutes just to be 
> sure. I have to hard reset after that, and I can't see anything recorded 
> anywhere in /var/log. The stock F8 kernel boots just fine, although I 
> haven't got audio working.
> 
> any insights?

Hmmm, I remember this happening at some point but I can't remember the
solution. Probably Carr (who's in the list) has better memory, he has
been helping students do the install...

...

[moments later] I think you have to add "nohz=off" in the kernel command
line[*], we found that (one of several posted "solutions", others
included "noapic" and "acpi=off") through google and that managed to get
a particular laptop to be happy and boot. 

-- Fernando

[*] just edit it at boot time and then add it to /etc/grub/grub.conf