why did FC6 install a XEN kernel on my inspiron?

[James Wilkinson]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>   i just finished installing FC6 over top of my LVM FC5 filesystems
> (leaving /home where it is, of course, as i have done numerous times),
> and what i just saw at first reboot was a XEN kernel, the booting of
> which ended badly with
> 
> "cannot execute a PAE-enabled kernel on a PAE-less CPU!"

A quick Google suggests that the Inspiron 9200 may well have shipped with
a Pentium M processor that does not support PAE (which surprised me).
Also, FC6 now expects that people making use of Xen will need PAE
(using multiple operating systems concurrently means a lot of memory, and
the 4GB limit without PAE on 32 bit is likely to be reached):
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2006-May/msg00066.html
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-August/msg00037.html

So it's not too surprising that Xen complains.

If you press the key to look at the boot menu, is there still a non-Xen
kernel installed? If so, I'd boot to that. If not, try booting to a
rescue CD and installing a non-Xen kernel.

Are you actually using Xen (or planning to use it?) If so, I'm afraid
your only option is to recompile the Fedora kernel without PAE support
(or replace your laptop).

James.
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