I experienced the exact same problem with a Dell PowerEdge 1750 (single Xeon processor). It stopped at "Freeing unused kernel memory" and normally the next line would be the INIT.
That's precisely the same problem I encountered when I tried to install 2.6. It also hangs at "Freeing unused kernel memory."
I also get this error msg when installing:
/dev/mapper/control: open failed: No such file or directory
Is device-mapper driver missing from kernel?
Command failed
I found some info, such as here:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2003-December/msg01117.html
I am, however, reluctant to try anything due to my lack of knowledge of Linux. In the interim I found that the latest 2.4 kernel also intermittently hangs on my system.
Gary
I could still hit CRTL-ALT-DEL and the system would reboot. I tried everything (building the scsi and fs modules in the kernel) but changing the Processor Type. I just installed FC2 on the same box and it worked but looking a the kernel source, the processor type is a Pentium-Pro, not the Pentium-4/Celeron(P4-based)/Pentium-4 M/Xeon type. It appears to be runninig fine - change the processor to Pentium-Pro and see if this works. Vernon
