NMI when installing RHEL 6.5 with the Nvidia Tesla K10 - IBM NeXtScale nx360 M4 (5455)

Resolving The Problem

Source

RETAIN tip: H212549

Symptom

A Software Non-Maskable Interupt (NMI) can occur when installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 Update 5 with the NVIDIA Tesla K10 card installed in the system.

Affected configurations

The system may be any of the following IBM servers:

• NeXtScale nx360 M4, type 5455, any model

The system is configured with one or more of the following IBM Options:

• NVIDIA Tesla K10 GPU Adapter, Option part number 00D4192, any replacement part number (CRU)

This tip is not software specific.

Workaround

Using the 'Basic Video' install option for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 Update 5 will allow the installation of this Operating System to proceed without issue.

To select the 'Basic Video' Install method, press any key when prompted at the initial boot of the install media of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 update 5, which will bring up the installation options menu. Select the 'Basic Video' option from the available installation methods.

Additional information

This software Non-Maskable Interrupt is caused by a negative interaction between the nouveau driver that is included in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 update 5 distribution and the NVIDIA Tesla K10 card. This is a permanent limitation since the nouveau driver is open source and not under the control of NVIDIA and Red Hat does not plan to include the closed source NVIDIA driver in their distribution.