2.2.17pre9-ben1 gmac problems on iBook

2.2.17pre9-ben1 gmac problems on iBook

[Christof Petig]

Hi Ben,

after some problems with linuxcare.com.au's current kernel I was glad to see your
announcement.
But your new gmac driver still has the same problem for me:

Once the card is activated (and a network cable plugged in) the machine tells me
   eth0: Duplicate entry of the interrupt handler !
six or seven times and then goes into kernel debugger (which simply garbages my
screen)

Hardware:
iBook 300MHz, 192MB, ATI Rage 3D Mobility AGPx2 (or so) [4c4e], BootX

Christof

PS: I have never been able to boot any 2.3+ kernels since I get a bunch of
DMA timeouts. Perhaps the kernel arguments?
    ide0=noautotune idebus=66
Though I tried some variants (empty line and more) last time without any success.
What changed, though, is that it can read my partition table (around March, 10th?
the 2.3.x kernel wasn't able to do that)


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Re: 2.2.17pre9-ben1 gmac problems on iBook

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>
>after some problems with linuxcare.com.au's current kernel I was glad to
>see your
>announcement.
>But your new gmac driver still has the same problem for me:
>
>Once the card is activated (and a network cable plugged in) the machine
>tells me
>   eth0: Duplicate entry of the interrupt handler !
>six or seven times and then goes into kernel debugger (which simply
>garbages my
>screen)
>
>Hardware:
>iBook 300MHz, 192MB, ATI Rage 3D Mobility AGPx2 (or so) [4c4e], BootX
>
>Christof
>
>PS: I have never been able to boot any 2.3+ kernels since I get a bunch of
>DMA timeouts. Perhaps the kernel arguments?
>    ide0=noautotune idebus=66
>Though I tried some variants (empty line and more) last time without any
>success.
>What changed, though, is that it can read my partition table (around
>March, 10th?
>the 2.3.x kernel wasn't able to do that)

Which bootloader are you using ? I suspect you are using BootX. The
kernel is not reliable when using it, you should be using yaboot.

Ben.


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Re: 2.2.17pre9-ben1 gmac problems on iBook

[Christof Petig]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> >
> >after some problems with linuxcare.com.au's current kernel I was glad to
> >see your
> >announcement.
> >But your new gmac driver still has the same problem for me:
> >
> >Once the card is activated (and a network cable plugged in) the machine
> >tells me
> >   eth0: Duplicate entry of the interrupt handler !
> >six or seven times and then goes into kernel debugger (which simply
> >garbages my
> >screen)
> >
> >Hardware:
> >iBook 300MHz, 192MB, ATI Rage 3D Mobility AGPx2 (or so) [4c4e], BootX
> >
> >Christof
> >
> >PS: I have never been able to boot any 2.3+ kernels since I get a bunch of
> >DMA timeouts. Perhaps the kernel arguments?
> >    ide0=noautotune idebus=66
> >Though I tried some variants (empty line and more) last time without any
> >success.
> >What changed, though, is that it can read my partition table (around
> >March, 10th?
> >the 2.3.x kernel wasn't able to do that)
>
> Which bootloader are you using ? I suspect you are using BootX. The
> kernel is not reliable when using it, you should be using yaboot.
>
> Ben.

You're right.
Strange though that BootX gives this kind of weird behaviour (2.2.15pre14
works fine for me).
I'll report about yaboot soon.

Christof


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Re: 2.2.17pre9-ben1 gmac problems on iBook

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>
>You're right.
>Strange though that BootX gives this kind of weird behaviour (2.2.15pre14
>works fine for me).
>I'll report about yaboot soon.

You "think" it worked right, but I'm pretty sure that if you do an
extensive memory testing, you'll discover that random bits of memory are
damaged and that the kernel is actually not fully reliable when booting
with BootX.


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Re: 2.2.17pre9-ben1 gmac problems on iBook

[Christof Petig]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> >
> >You're right.
> >Strange though that BootX gives this kind of weird behaviour (2.2.15pre14
> >works fine for me).
> >I'll report about yaboot soon.
>
> You "think" it worked right, but I'm pretty sure that if you do an
> extensive memory testing, you'll discover that random bits of memory are
> damaged and that the kernel is actually not fully reliable when booting
> with BootX.

After wrestling about two days with yaboot, the kernel boots fine.

Now I can recommend (on iBooks and alike):
- make yaboot's partition of type Apple_Bootstrap (anything else didn't work
for me)
- 1MB is fine (800k is minimum (still true?))
- splitting the swap partition is a good choice if you have a running system
- move it up/downwards to the second position (moving partitions is a nice
feature)
- if you want MacOS press option while booting
- "video=ofonly" is a good last resort help

Could someone please put the following explanations into the yaboot-faq:
  Option is the key with  alt and a half-fork on it.
  Command is the key with the apple and the knotlike figure
I had not been a Mac expert, so I had to guess.

    Christof


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Re: 2.2.17pre9-ben1 gmac problems on iBook

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>- make yaboot's partition of type Apple_Bootstrap (anything else didn't work
>for me)

I usually use Apple_HFS so I can tweak it from MacOS, but that's probably
not what most users want to do ;) Usually, I have an HFS standard
partition used for data exchange between MacOS and Linux, I also use it
for the bootstrap stuffs.

>- 1MB is fine (800k is minimum (still true?))

That depends if you put your kernel on it or not. I do, but it's not
necessary. Again, most users will probably want the kernel to be on the
ext2 partition.

>- splitting the swap partition is a good choice if you have a running system
>- move it up/downwards to the second position (moving partitions is a nice
>feature)
>- if you want MacOS press option while booting

This can be a bit slow. Another solution is to use set OF to boot a
script that will itself boot either yaboot or MacOS depending if you
press a given key. Such a script is bundled with ybin, but it currently
requires some tweaking to get the OF boot path for both MacOS and yaboot
right in the script itself.

>- "video=ofonly" is a good last resort help

On iBooks. Note that recent kernels (like my just released 2.2.17pre10-
ben1) have a working video driver for iBooks.

Fortunately, SuSE people have been working hard on some Linux-based tools
to help configuring the bootloader and OF boot path properly. Those tools
are GPLd, so they'll be useable on other distributions as well. They are
still adding final touch to them, so I don't think you should jump on
them immediately, but that's a real good thing in the long term. (Thanks
Olaf ! ;)

Ben.


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