Message-Id: <1234316533.3706.104.camel@localhost.localdomain>
Date:	Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:42:13 +0800
From:	yakui_zhao <yakui.zhao@...el.com>
To:	Sam Ruby <rubys@...ertwingly.net>
Cc:	Len Brown <lenb@...nel.org>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-acpi@...r.kernel.org" <linux-acpi@...r.kernel.org>,
	"x86@...nel.org" <x86@...nel.org>,
	"Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@...ux-mips.org>
Subject: Re: [APIC] Kernel panic, rsync corruption, intel q8200, 2.6.28-rc8

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 19:46 +0800, Sam Ruby wrote:
> yakui_zhao wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 07:50 +0800, Sam Ruby wrote:
> >> Len Brown wrote:
> >>>>> Do you have a second computer around with a serial port ? If yes, then
> >>>>> please add the following to the kernel command line:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>        earlyprintk=serial,ttyS0,115200 apic=debug
> >>>>>
> >>>>> and connect the serial ports with a null modem cable. Fire up a
> >>>>> terminal program on the second machine and capture the output.
> >>>> I do have a second computer, and went out and bought a null modem adapter for
> >>>> my serial cable and connected the two machines.  I've tried installing minicom
> >>>> and also connecting it to ttyS0 at 115200 baud on the second machine, but when
> >>>> I boot the first machine I don't see any output on the terminal.
> >>> /boot/grub/menu.lst:
> >>>
> >>> serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
> >>> terminal --timeout=300 serial console
> > Do you have an opportunity to try the boot option of "acpi=off" as
> > suggested by Lenb?
> 
> That also produces the "MP-BIOS bug" message and halts.
Do you mean that the box still can't be booted with ACPI disabled? If
so, it should be a BIOS bug. It had better be fixed by bios upgrading.
   From the following test it seems that there exists the MPS table,
which describes how the timer is connected with I/O APIC. But
unfortunately it is still incorrect. 
   And the timer still can't work w/o the timer override.
   
   Only when I/O apic is skipped can the box be booted. The timer is
connected with 8259.  And the timer can work as expected. But there
still exist other issue.
    
> 
> >      From the log it seems that there exists the following warning
> > message:
> >     >MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
> > 
> >     Can you try the following boot options?
> >     a. acpi_use_timer_override
> 
> That also produces the "MP-BIOS bug" message and halts.
> 
> >     b. acpi_skip_timer_override
> 
> That also produces the "MP-BIOS bug" message and halts.
> 
> >     c. noapic
> 
> With that, I can boot, but I get data corruption problems.  Data 
> corruption problems I don't see when using the same hardware but with 
> Microsoft Vista.  More details can be found here:
> 
> http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/01/20/noAPIC
> http://intertwingly.net/stories/2009/01/22/
> 
> I am willing to install new kernels on fresh hard drives, run diagnostic 
> programs and report the output, including capturing serial output.  Is 
> there any data I can gather to help diagnose this problem?
> 
> >     Thanks.
> >>> is what I use.
> >>>
> >>> this will give you a prompt from grub even before the kernel boots
> >>> so you can select (and edit) your kernel via menu over the serial line
> >>> if you wish.
> >> I've got that working now.  I used minicom on the remote machine, 
> >> capturing the output.  You can see me fumbling around, editing the 
> >> kernel command and booting here:
> >>
> >> http://intertwingly.net/stories/2009/02/09/minicom.out
> >>
> >> While it is difficult to make out what I did given line wrapping, etc, 
> >> what I started with was:
> >>
> >> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic 
> >> root=UUID=4fce230e-fe72-4685-aab0-294ef1c20efa ro noapic quiet splash
> >>
> >> After editing, what I had was
> >>
> >> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic 
> >> root=UUID=4fce230e-fe72-4685-aab0-294ef1c20efa ro quiet splash 
> >> earlyprintk=serial,ttyS0,115200 apic=debug
> >>
> >> As you can see, the last line I saw was "Starting up ...", after which 
> >> point the "MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC" etc output 
> >> appeared on the monitor that is directly connected to the machine being 
> >> booted (i.e., this text did not appear on the minicom session).
> >>
> >>> If this doesn't work, then the kernel earlyprintk is unlikely to work 
> >>> also.
> >> At the moment, it looks like it works, but earlyprintk does not work for 
> >> me, at least not on Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic.
> >>
> >>> Note that there may be some BIOS SETUP options related to the serial port 
> >>> -- worth checking.
> >>>
> >>> Also, in minicom, be sure to turn off HW flow control
> >>>
> >>> there is a fancy serial console document someplace on this,
> >>> probably at http://tldp.org/
> >> As I have managed to get grub to talk to the serial console, I did not 
> >> explore these options further.  Please let me know if there is something 
> >> in particular I should explore.
> >>
> >>> good luck,
> >>> -Len
> >> - Sam Ruby
> >> --
> >> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-acpi" in
> >> the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
> >> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 
> - Sam Ruby

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