From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Earle Nietzel Subject: Re: Gigabyte 6VXDC7 mobo (Via 694X chipset) SMP instability Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 22:23:16 -0400 Message-ID: <42798394.8020302@rhinobox.org> References: <1115238927.6560.36.camel@basecamp.bottlenose.demon.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1115238927.6560.36.camel@basecamp.bottlenose.demon.co.uk> Sender: linux-smp-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Tim Day Cc: linux-smp@vger.kernel.org Tim Day wrote: > I have a machine with a Gigabyte 6VXDC7 mobo (Via 694X chipset) with a > pair of 933MHz P3s and a couple of GB of RAM. I run Debian Sarge's > stock -686-smp kernels (2.4 series or more recently 2.6.8). > > With a "nosmp" boot option (or using uniprocessor kernels) the box is > rock solid. But when I run in SMP mode it generates sporadic > "APIC error on CPUx: 0y(0z)" > type messages, generally in pairs, every few minutes (or several per > minute with the 2.6.8 kernel without a "noapic" boot option). > Eventually the machine invariably locks up hard with no warning after an > uptime of on the order of a few minutes or a few days (depending on > kernel version, boot options, load and luck). I've tried just about > every possible combination of BIOS settings and boot options, memchecked > the RAM, rearranged PCI cards and upgraded the PSU. Nothing seems to > help; the only way to get complete stability seems to be "nosmp" or a > non-SMP kernel. Have you tried using "noapic"? > > Googling around, there seem to be plenty of reports of similar behaviour > in 694X systems, but little in the way of definite solutions (with the > possible exception of someone who claimed to have fixed it by lowering a > voltage setting in their BIOS; my board's BIOS doesn't my give any > control of that unfortunately). > > Anyway, my question is this: is this chipset simply broken at the > hardware level (and I should just resign myself to uniprocessing) or is > there is some cunning combination of boot options and/or kernel compile > flag gnosis which will let me SMP with confidence ? > > Thanks for any advice > Tim >