I tried to run the SME5.6, SME6.0 and the SME601 installs on my system with 700+ meg of ram and recieved a kernel panic error. On my one system (same hardware except 256 meg of ram) to install SME5.6 I had to adjust the memory down by assigning to the kernel 128 meg of ram by using the mem= command after booting from a floppy. I found this fix within the forums.
Would you add to the installer a script that checks the total ram on the system and then assigns an amount less than the total system ram? I think
the problem with this error is that when the installer reads the total onboard ram as being over X amount of ram, it attempts to utilize more ram than is actually on the system, causing a kernel panic due to the fact that the kernel does not see the total ram passed to it.
The script would be quite simple,
get totalram
totalram = mem
if totalram = x
mem = totalram - intx
pass mem to kernel.
By doing this, you can control the amount of memory that is passed to the kernel and eliminate any kernel panics that are caused by more memory on a system than the kernel expects to be there.
After an install a log could be kept and the system could be made to automatically reboot when a kernel panic is issued do to memory. Then upon the reboot, the memory assigned to the kernel would be adjusted
down or up depending upon how much memory is on the system and how much memory was previousely on the system. This memory assignment would be stored in a file and adjusted each time the system had to reboot due to a kernel panic, this process would continue until there is no kernel panic at which the system fully boots and runs.
What this type of a setup does is allow the system to correct it's self and eliminates this as being a potential bug for admins to deal with.
You could also have default memory settings based
upon how much memory a system has and again eliminate the kernel panic that is caused by memory.
Just a suggestion:
Scott
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