CRC errors decompressing kernel on boot

CRC errors decompressing kernel on boot

[Pedro Soria Rodriguez]

Hello,

I am getting a CRC error when the kernel is being decompressed after
loading.  It is intermitent, but I can force it to occur on every boot
if I type on the keyboard while the kernel is loaded (before being 
decompressed). 

It happens on a certain machine, with USB keyboard.
It does *not* happen with a PS2 keyboard.
It does not happen on other machines with USB or PS2 keyboards.

I would say this is a hardware problem, as I see it happen only on a certain
type of machine.  It is custom built by a manufacturer in Spain, with:
# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #1) (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #2) (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #3) (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DB ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DB ICH4 IDE (rev 01)

The keyboard is USB.  Lilo is 22.4.
Problem happens both with 2.4.20-ac2 and 2.4.21-pre5-ac2
kernels are compiled with gcc (GCC) 3.2.3 20030221 (Debian prerelease)
and I saw no problems during compilation.

All i really need to know is whether it is a Linux problem, a Lilo problem
or a hardware problem.   Any help I can get will be helpful.
I searched the kernel list archives but found nothing similar to this
problem.

Thank you,

-- 
Pedro Soria Rodríguez
psoria@hispafuentes.com

Re: CRC errors decompressing kernel on boot

[Pedro Soria Rodriguez]

I ended up finding a solution to my problem myself, so I will post it
here for the record.
First, a summary of the problem I had with kernel 2.4.20-ac2 and
2.4.21-pre5-ac2 and Lilo 22.4:

On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 16:05, Pedro Soria Rodriguez wrote:
> I am getting a CRC error when the kernel is being decompressed after
> loading.  It is intermitent, but I can force it to occur on every boot
> if I type on the keyboard while the kernel is loaded (before being 
> decompressed). 
> It happens on a certain machine, 
> with USB keyboard, and not with a PS2 keyboard.
> It does not happen on other machines with USB or PS2 keyboards.

The problem turned out to be a combination of LILO and an apparently
buggy BIOS. 

I switched from using LILO to using GRUB as a boot loader, and the
problem went away.  I found that loading a kernel with SYSLINUX (from
CDROM), LoadLin (from DOS), PXE (over the net) all works fine.  It is
only when loading it with LILO when the CRC error appears.  I read
somewhere on the net that the problem may be related to a buggy BIOS in
the machine.   

The problem was the USB keyb + buggy BIOS + LILO + large kernel    
(apparently this does not happen on small kernels, as I read somewhere
else on the net).

cheers,

--
Pedro Soria-Rodríguez

Re: CRC errors decompressing kernel on boot

[Martin Schlemmer]

On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 12:15, Pedro Soria Rodriguez wrote:

> The problem turned out to be a combination of LILO and an apparently
> buggy BIOS. 
> 

I saw in changes to lilo-22.5.1_beta4, that he fixed some problems
with certain nvidia cards, where the VGA bios corrupts BX I think.
If you have a nvidia vga card, you might try lilo-22.5.1 when it
is released.


Regards,

-- 
Martin Schlemmer