Unexpected IO-APIC messages

Dave Johnson
2001-07-16T19:05:06Z

When booting up 2.4.2-2smp (RH 7.1) on a new system here, the kernel
complains about the IO-APIC register contents, and asks that mail be
sent to linux-smp@vger.kernel.org.

It appears that the linux-smp list is defunct; at least there have been
no new messages archived on geocrawler since August 2000. It also
appears that the new IO APIC reg01.version of 0x20 was reported about
a year ago on the linux-smp list, and reg_01.__reserved_2 of 0x80 was
reported on this list around February 2001.

The relevant dmesg info from our machine follows:
----
testing the IO APIC.......................

IO APIC #2......
.... register #00: 02000000
....... : physical APIC id: 02
.... register #01: 00178020
....... : max redirection entries: 0017
....... : IO APIC version: 0020
WARNING: unexpected IO-APIC, please mail
to linux-smp@vger.kernel.org
WARNING: unexpected IO-APIC, please mail
to linux-smp@vger.kernel.org
.... register #02: 00000000
....... : arbitration: 00
----

The APIC information from lspci -v follows:
----
03:00.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 82806AA PCI64 Hub Advanced Programmable Interrupt
Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 20 [IO(X)-APIC])
Subsystem: Intel Corporation 82806AA PCI64 Hub Advanced Programmable Int
errupt Controller
Flags: fast devsel
Memory at fe400000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=4K]
----

If anyone is planning to do anything about new IO-APIC versions and stuff,
at least the mailing list address should be corrected.

If nobody cares until a bug comes along, perhaps the message should be
changed to say "unrecognized" or "unknown" rather than unexpected, so
the d**n users don't pee in their pants when they see the boot log
scrolling by.

Or maybe just parse and print out the values and refer the user to
linux/Documentation/i386/IO-APIC.txt (which also still refers to the
linux-smp mailing list) for further information.

Thanks,

-- ddj

Dave Johnson
ddj@cascv.brown.edu