Re: 2.6 kernel boot crashing

Re: 2.6 kernel boot crashing

[Thomas E. Vaughan]

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On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 04:58:16PM +0000, Matthew Garrett
wrote:
>
> Thomas E. Vaughan wrote:
> 
> >PnPBIOS: PnP BIOS version 1.0, entry 0xf000:0x6d5a, dseg 0xf000
> >general protection fault: 0000 [#1]
> 
> There have been problems with PnP BIOS support on various
> motherboards.  Try rebuilding the kernel package without
> PNPBIOS support (you probably don't need it - it's there
> in order to manage resource allocation for legacy hardware
> like serial ports, and in most cases the BIOS will happily
> set those up on its own) and see if that works.

That did the trick.  The only config option that matters is

   "Plug and Play BIOS support (EXPERIMENTAL)",

which must *not* be selected.  I noticed that the top-level

   "Plug and Play support"

and also

   "ISA Plug and Play support (EXPERIMENTAL)"

can be selected, and the kernel still boots OK.  But that
PnPBIOS support crashes the kernel hard.

Is it reasonable to request that Herbert Xu, or whoever is
in charge of configuring the relevant Debian kernels, turn
off the PnPBIOS support until this is fixed upstream.
Should someone (like me) file a bug report?  If so, then
against which package?

> If so, send a copy of the oops and your kernel version to
> linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org and the kernel developers
> will deal with it.

I'll attach my original report to this message and copy it
to linux-kernel.

> Another thing worth trying is to make sure your BIOS is
> fully up to date.

What's the best way of doing that?  I just bought this
2.8-GHz Pentium 4 machine in mid-December from Best Buy, so
I don't imagine that the BIOS is particularly old, but I
don't know how to tell.

-- 
Thomas E. Vaughan   (303) 939-6386   Ball Aerospace, Boulder

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From: "Thomas E. Vaughan" <tevaugha@ball.com>
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Subject: 2.6 kernel boot crashing
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 08:40:44 -0700
Message-ID: <20040211154044.GA656@ball.com>


I have an HP Pavilion A350N that I purchased from Best Buy a
couple of months ago.  It has a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4 processor
"with Hyper-Threading Technology".  Anyway, I'm running
Debian unstable, and every 2.6 kernel image that I have
installed has crashed at boot time.  I have not tried
compiling my own, but I have tried both the -686 and the
-386 packages.  Here's what I copied off of the black screen
before unplugging the machine from the wall.

----------BEGIN HAND-COPY FROM SCREEN----------
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
PnPBIOS: Scanning system for PnP BIOS support...
PnPBIOS: Found PnP BIOS installation structure at 0xc00f5f50
PnPBIOS: PnP BIOS version 1.0, entry 0xf000:0x6d5a, dseg 0xf000
general protection fault: 0000 [#1]
CPU:    0
EIP:    0098:[<00001f1c>]   Not tainted
EFLAGS: 00010083
EIP is at 0x1f1c
eax: 000022ec  ebx: 0000005d  ecx: 00010000  edx: 00000001
esi: f7fa1cd4  edi: 00000015  ebp: f7fa0000  esp: f7fa1efa
ds: 00b0  es: 00b0  ss: 0068
Process swapper (pid: 1, threadinfo=f7fa0000 task=c1b21900)
Stack: 000002ec 22ec1d8e 00000000 8f9d0015 0006c7b3 00010001 1f4c8f3c 0015c7ba
       1f4c0000 c7b31f28 00060001 70190606 01060106 007b6e74 0000007b 00a00000
       6e3000b0 00a86df6 00000082 000b0000 00010090 00a80000 00b00000 00a00001
Call Trace:

Code: Bad EIP value
 <0>Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!
----------END HAND-COPY FROM SCREEN----------

-- 
Thomas E. Vaughan   (303) 939-6386   Ball Aerospace, Boulder

Re: 2.6 kernel boot crashing

[Bas Mevissen]

Thomas E. Vaughan wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 04:58:16PM +0000, Matthew Garrett
> wrote:
> 
>>Thomas E. Vaughan wrote:
>>
>>
>>>PnPBIOS: PnP BIOS version 1.0, entry 0xf000:0x6d5a, dseg 0xf000
>>>general protection fault: 0000 [#1]
>>
>>There have been problems with PnP BIOS support on various
>>motherboards.  Try rebuilding the kernel package without
>>PNPBIOS support (you probably don't need it - it's there
>>in order to manage resource allocation for legacy hardware
>>like serial ports, and in most cases the BIOS will happily
>>set those up on its own) and see if that works.
> 
> 
> That did the trick.  The only config option that matters is
> 
>    "Plug and Play BIOS support (EXPERIMENTAL)",
> 
> which must *not* be selected.  I noticed that the top-level
> 
>    "Plug and Play support"
> 
> and also
> 
>    "ISA Plug and Play support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
> 
> can be selected, and the kernel still boots OK.  But that
> PnPBIOS support crashes the kernel hard.
> 

I can confirm that on an Asus P4P800 Deluxe motherboard too for at least 
kernel 2.6.0 and 2.6.1.

Setting the command line option pnpbios=off is a good fix for people who 
would like to run a pre-compiled kernel on those mainboards.

Regards,

Bas.