After a successful boot, I tried using mkreiserfs on my SATA drives. Boom. I recalled that in trying to get Debian to work, I had fiddled with several BIOS settings. I went back, changed one, and things are now working fine. Bad bios setting: Integrated Peripherals->South OnChip PCI Device->Onboard Chip SATA RAID Controller Use "IDE Controller" here instead. Reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: 1.Set BIOS->Integrated Peripherals->South OnChip PCI Device->Onboard Chip SATA = RAID Controller 2.Boot with Athlon 2005.0 universal cd. 3.Use fdisk to create a 20GB linux partition on /dev/sda and a 20GB partition on /dev/sdb 4.Run "mkreiserfs /dev/sda1" Actual Results: livecd root # mkreiserfs /dev/sda1 hda: DMA timeout retry hda: timeout waiting for DMA hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } ide: failed opcode was: unknown hda: drive not ready for command hda: ATAPI reset complete NMI Watchdog detected LOCKUP on CPU0CPU 0 Modules linked in: evdev 8139too mii parport_pc parport ahci sata_qstor sata_uli sata_sis sata_sx4 sata_nv sata_via sata_svw sata_sil sata_promise libata sbp2 ohci1394 ieee1394 usb_storage ohci_hcd uhci_hcd ehci_hcd usbcore Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.11-gentoo-r3-k8 RIP: 0010:[<fffffffff8035c033>] [<ffffffff8035c033>] RSP: 0018:ffffffff80407e68 EFLAGS: 00000086 RAX: ffffffff804368c0 RBX: ffff81003bbd0000 RCX: 0000000000000001 RDX: 000000003b3f0000 RSI: 000000003bef0000 RDI: ffffffff8044fb00 RBP: ffffffff804369d0 R08: ffffffff80452000 R09: 0000000000000001 R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: 0000000000000001 R13: 0000000000000001 R14: 0000000000000001 R15: ffffffff804369d0 FS: 0000000000514ae0(0000) GS:ffffffff8044b480(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0018 ES: 0018 CR0: 000000008005003b CR2: 00000000005aa760 CR3: 00000000378eb000 CR4: 00000000000006a0 Process swapper (pid: 0, threadinfo ffffffff80452000, task ffffffff803bf980 Stack: 0000000000000046 ffffffff802d61ad 000000003bef0000 000000003b3f0000 ffffffff804369d0 ffffffff804369d0 0000000000000001 ffffffff802eb891 ffff81003b157e60 ffffffff802e385e Call Trace:<IRQ> [<ffffffff802d61ad>] [<ffffffff802eb891>] [<ffffffff802e385e>] [<ffffffff802e394b>] [<ffffffff802ef09a>] [<ffffffff80134bfd>] [<ffffffff802ef3b5>] [<ffffffff802ef3b5>] [<ffffffff802ef0d7>] [<ffffffff802efc7e>] [<ffffffff802efb99>] [<ffffffff802e5211>] [<ffffffff80146111>] [<ffffffff80146223>] [<ffffffff8010fb8e>] [<ffffffff8010d6e5>] <EOI> [<ffffffff8035aebe>] [<ffffffff010b629>] [<ffffffff8010b649>] [<ffffffff8010b757>] [<ffffffff80454714>] [<ffffffff80454244>] Code: 80 3f 00 7e f9 e9 2e fe ff ff e8 26 92 f0 ff e9 46 fe ff ff console shuts up ... <0>Kernel panic - not syncing: Aiee, killing interrupt handler! Expected Results: Eventually, "ReiserFS is successfully created on /dev/sda1". System: Motherboard MSI RS480M2-IL w/ Athlon64 3000+ Date on the bios is 02/03/2005, ATI SB400 chipset Hard drives: 2x 200GB WD Caviar SE Serial Sata
You should try to update your bios. Report back if that doesn't help...