Comment 24 for bug 8375

(In reply to comment #23)
> If you can, it might help to try "noapic" and "acpi=off" (separately)

(In reply to comment #5)
> acpi=off worked. I'm using --directisa instead with hwclock because I need acpi
> to use HT on these machines. I'm bringing down the severity because this isn't
> as enigmatic as it was before -- most likely *another* dell acpi bug. :)

Hi -

I'm an instructor at a community college in New Hampshire. For our spring
course I thought to install Ubuntu in our LAMP lab - sixteen new machines,
a good chance to show off truly Free software (as opposed to Fedora, which
we've used previously).

The new machines, unfortunately, are Dell GX280s. I encountered this hang,
and not being a kernel developer but just an instructor, spent quite a
while trying to find out what was wrong. (Since a hang is, from a user's
standpoint, worse than any possible error message, given that there is
no error message.)

I was able to discover from Debian postings about the "acpi=off" workaround,
and I was able to complete the pilot install. (So Ubuntu is still in the
running for our spring classes.)

But allow me to say that the priority should not be lowered, because it IS
enigmatic to people in the field. (Yes, as a former hardware support engineer
I'm aware that it's Dell's bug, not Ubuntu's. That's life in PC-land,
and I'm not trying to be flip or offensive. It's just that ANYONE who's
trying their first Ubuntu install on what looks to a neophyte like the
"latest and greatest" will get burned by the worst of errors, the silent
failure. Neophytes are likely to just walk away, angry and frustrated.)

Bill Sconce
In Spec, Inc.
Lyndeborough, New Hampshire
<email address hidden>

[Forgive me if this isn't the right way to help out using Bugzilla.]