Bug 6238 - Problem with ACPI on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 motherboard - freeze on boot
Summary: Problem with ACPI on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 motherboard - freeze on boot
Status: REJECTED UNREPRODUCIBLE
Alias: None
Product: ACPI
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Config-Processors (show other bugs)
Hardware: i386 Linux
: P2 normal
Assignee: Len Brown
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2006-03-17 04:54 UTC by Robin
Modified: 2007-03-09 01:22 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Kernel Version: 2.6.15.6
Subsystem:
Regression: ---
Bisected commit-id:


Attachments
The changes I was able to make to the DSDT so far (1017 bytes, patch)
2006-03-17 04:55 UTC, Robin
Details | Diff
The DSDT file I am trying to get compiled (160.80 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:56 UTC, Robin
Details
My Linux .config file (28.60 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:57 UTC, Robin
Details
The output of /proc/cpuinfo when booted using Knoppix (1.07 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:57 UTC, Robin
Details
The output of 'dmesg' when run under Knoppix (19.04 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:58 UTC, Robin
Details
The output of 'dmesg' when I have to boot with acpi=off (14.18 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:58 UTC, Robin
Details
The output of 'dmidecode' (14.02 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:58 UTC, Robin
Details
The output of 'dmidecode' under Knoppix (14.02 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:59 UTC, Robin
Details
The output of 'lspci -v -v' (16.22 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:59 UTC, Robin
Details
The iasl compiler errors when trying to compile AuroraAMD64.dsl (4.62 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-17 04:59 UTC, Robin
Details
The output of acpidump (85.95 KB, text/plain)
2006-03-20 20:46 UTC, Robin
Details

Description Robin 2006-03-17 04:54:00 UTC
Most recent kernel where this bug did not occur:
	none
Distribution:
	Debian Sarge
Hardware Environment:
	Alienware Aurora notebook m7700
	RAID-0 VIA with two drives
Software Environment:
	Bare minimum Sarge distribution
Problem Description:

I have recently bought an Alienware Aurora m7700 notebook, which comes
with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ dual core processor (wow, that's a
mouth full). Since it came set up with a RAID-0 VIA adapter I need
dmraid in order to recognize my drives, which means that I cannot boot
directly into Linux. Thus, I am forced to use Loadlin and a
vmlinuz/initrd combination which initializes dmraid and boots up the
rest of the system. I am only mentioning all this in case the fact
that I am booting from Loadlin has anything to do with my problem.

My problem is that, with an SMP kernel, I am unable to get both
processors recognized. I currently suspect that the reason for this is
that the system freezes very early on in the boot cycle if ACPI is
turned on. When I specify "acpi=off" the system boots successfully but
it fails to detect the motherboard as multi-processor and only
initializes the first processor.

When I boot from a Knoppix 4.0.2 cd, ACPI is turned on successfully
and IO-APIC/Local APIC is turned on so that both of my processors get
recognized. In fact, if I try to boot Knoppix with "acpi=off" it
freezes immediately on startup. This puzzles me somewhat since I have
tried using the very same kernel from the Knoppix cd to boot from my
harddisk and got the same problem there.

The reason I am asking for help on this list is that I am now
labouring under the assumption that the problem with recognizing my
processors is due to the fact that ACPI cannot be turned on (at least,
not when booting from my hard drive), which I think must be because my
BIOS has a faulty ACPI namespace. I read up on
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt and obtained the DSDT for my system,
which turns out to have quite a lot of compilation errors. Some of
these I could correct but almost two dozen remain, and I was wondering
if someone on this list could nudge me along in the right
direction[1].
If there is any other information I could give that might help with
this, please let me know. I am really eager to get this 100% working
under Linux...

Thanks in advance,
- robin

[1] Of course, if trying to make the DSDT compile correctly is just a
red herring, I would still appreciate any suggestions as to what the
real root cause is :-)
Comment 1 Robin 2006-03-17 04:55:36 UTC
Created attachment 7592 [details]
The changes I was able to make to the DSDT so far
Comment 2 Robin 2006-03-17 04:56:40 UTC
Created attachment 7593 [details]
The DSDT file I am trying to get compiled
Comment 3 Robin 2006-03-17 04:57:10 UTC
Created attachment 7594 [details]
My Linux .config file
Comment 4 Robin 2006-03-17 04:57:41 UTC
Created attachment 7595 [details]
The output of /proc/cpuinfo when booted using Knoppix
Comment 5 Robin 2006-03-17 04:58:00 UTC
Created attachment 7596 [details]
The output of 'dmesg' when run under Knoppix
Comment 6 Robin 2006-03-17 04:58:27 UTC
Created attachment 7597 [details]
The output of 'dmesg' when I have to boot with acpi=off
Comment 7 Robin 2006-03-17 04:58:45 UTC
Created attachment 7598 [details]
The output of 'dmidecode'
Comment 8 Robin 2006-03-17 04:59:07 UTC
Created attachment 7599 [details]
The output of 'dmidecode' under Knoppix
Comment 9 Robin 2006-03-17 04:59:34 UTC
Created attachment 7600 [details]
The output of 'lspci -v -v'
Comment 10 Robin 2006-03-17 04:59:56 UTC
Created attachment 7601 [details]
The iasl compiler errors when trying to compile AuroraAMD64.dsl
Comment 11 Luming Yu 2006-03-20 18:27:25 UTC
>My problem is that, with an SMP kernel, I am unable to get both
>processors recognized.
Could you please try latest baseline kernel, and latest BIOS?

>I read up on http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt and obtained the DSDT for my 
>system, which turns out to have quite a lot of compilation errors
This is NOT a right approach for fix your problem. Although, it can help 
debugging the issue.

Please attach acpidump output.

Comment 12 Robin 2006-03-20 20:46:08 UTC
Created attachment 7620 [details]
The output of acpidump

Created when booted from the Knoppix cd, since that is the only way to get ACPI
working right now.
Comment 13 Robin 2006-03-20 20:48:14 UTC
I've attached the acpidump output.

With latest baseline kernel do you mean the Linus tree, the -mm tree or perhaps
another tree?

Thanks,
- robin
Comment 14 Luming Yu 2006-03-20 21:57:42 UTC
Re: which tree
linus tree
Comment 15 Robin 2006-03-21 14:16:28 UTC
I tried out the 2.6.16 kernel and got the same problem with that one.
The bootup sequence basically locks up after the following message:

ACPI namespace successfully loaded at root b042d698

Unfortunately I cannot see what happens earlier in the boot sequence since all
but the last 40 lines or so are scrolled off the screen and I can't write to
disk yet at that point since my harddisk controller cannot be recognized until
after I run the dmraid tool...
Comment 16 Shaohua 2006-03-21 18:21:44 UTC
Can you enable acpi debug option in your config, so we could get more infos. 
Better if you could write down several lines of output just before boot hang.

>ACPI namespace successfully loaded at root b042d698
This looks strange. is the PAGE_OFFSET 0xc0000000?

Another suspection is the acpi earily initialization (init before other CPUs 
boot breaks this system)
Comment 17 Robin 2006-03-22 12:18:19 UTC
This is what I could write down from the frozen boot screen. I ran it once with
just ACPI_DEBUG on and a second time with ACPI_DEBUG and also boot paramers
"acpi_dbg_layer=255" and "acpi_dbg_level=255". This is what I could write down
before it went off the screen:

[...]
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support: done
[...]
tbxface-0109 [02] load_tables : ACPI Tables successfully acquired
[...]
Parsing all Control Methods:..............................................
..........................................................................
[...]
Table [DSDT](id 0006) - 542 Objects with 61 Devices 164 Methods 17 Regions
[...]
Parsing all Control Methods:
Table [SSDT](id 0004) - 6 Objects with 0 Devices 0 Methods 0 Regions
[...]
nsload-0146 [05] ns_load_table: *** Completed Table Method Parsing and Object
Initialization ***
nsload-0208 [04] ns_load_table_by_type : Namespace load: 0 SSDT or PSDTs
ACPI namespace successfully loaded at c044433c







How can I find out what the PAGE_OFFSET is?
If ACPI tries to initialize too early before all CPUs are online, do you have a
suggestion on how I could force it to delay a while?

Thanks for your help,
- Robin
Comment 18 Len Brown 2006-03-22 18:47:04 UTC
please boot the latest kernel with acpi enabled, but with
maxcpus=1
and attach the output from dmesg -s64000
Comment 19 Robin 2006-03-22 21:14:39 UTC
This is a bit of a setback, but booting with "maxcpus=1" or even "maxcpus=0
nosmp" and ACPI turned on, still causes Linux to freeze up right after it
reports that the ACPI namespace has been loaded successfully.
Comment 20 Robin 2006-03-27 11:27:07 UTC
Would the fact that I am forced to boot into Linux using LoadLin have anything
to do with this? Could it be that DOS leaves the ACPI information in an
inconsistent state, or something to that effect? Obviously I don't know enough
about ACPI to figure that out, so my apologies if the question is a naive one...

- Robin
Comment 21 Robin 2006-04-05 07:33:23 UTC
I have turned off the RAID on my laptop, restoring my drives to a normal disk
setup. This allows me to boot into Linux straightaway, using Grub and doing away
with the DOS/Loadlin solution altogether. Using the very same kernel as before,
I can now successfully boot up with ACPI turned on and have both processors
recognized.

This issue could probably be closed now, unless someone wants to investigate it
further.
Comment 22 Len Brown 2007-03-09 01:22:12 UTC
hmmm, something funky about that raid setup.
glad the normal config is working

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