When enabling NUMA under RHEL4 Update 1 or CentOS 4.1, the kernel crashes during boot
The BIOS on this Tyan Quad Opteron platform does not set up NUMA data correctly under ACPI. When the kernel attempts to retrieve the information, it crashes. A similar platform such as the Omega 8430 does not exhibit this symptom.
As a workaround, a customized 2.6.9-11.ELsmp is provided. The kernel will not attempt to retrieve data through ACPI interface by turning off the build parameter CONFIG_ACPI_NUMA.
First, disable NUMA temporary by passing the kernel parameter 'numa=off' at the Grub boot menu. Once the kernel boots successfully, mount the ASL Driver CD and install the customized 2.6.9-11.ELsmp kernel.
mount /mnt/cdrom cd /mnt/cdrom/CentOS/4.1/NUMA rpm -Uvh --force kernel*2.6.9-11.EL*.rpm Afterward, reboot the system.
Note: Since NUMA is not enabled by default, use the following steps when reinstalling the operating system: