Bug 13586

Summary:	BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that Linux understands
Product:	ACPI	Reporter:	Fred van Zwieten (fvzwieten)
Component:	Config-Tables	Assignee:	acpi_config-tables
Status:	CLOSED INVALID
Severity:	normal	CC:	lenb, pf-kernelbug, rui.zhang, yakui.zhao
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	2.6.28	Subsystem:
Regression:	No	Bisected commit-id:
Attachments:	acpidump dmidecode dmesg /var/log/messages GRUB config for boot params kernel config please attach all your ACPI tables, using this script. acpi-tables dump

Description Fred van Zwieten 2009-06-20 10:49:05 UTC

Just being a good citizen by reporting as requisted by in dmesg: [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that Linux understands. Please report this to the Linux ACPI maintainers and complain to your BIOS vendor. I've attached all detail info according to the ACPI HOWTO.

Distribution: Mythbuntu 9.04
Kernel: 2.6.28-13-generic

Comment 1 Fred van Zwieten 2009-06-20 10:50:01 UTC

Created attachment 22021 [details]
acpidump

Comment 2 Fred van Zwieten 2009-06-20 10:50:23 UTC

Created attachment 22022 [details]
dmidecode

Comment 3 Fred van Zwieten 2009-06-20 10:50:42 UTC

Created attachment 22023 [details]
dmesg

Comment 4 Fred van Zwieten 2009-06-20 10:51:10 UTC

Created attachment 22024 [details]
/var/log/messages

Comment 5 Fred van Zwieten 2009-06-20 10:51:49 UTC

Created attachment 22025 [details]
GRUB config for boot params

Comment 6 Fred van Zwieten 2009-06-20 10:52:16 UTC

Created attachment 22026 [details]
kernel config

Comment 7 ykzhao 2009-06-22 00:42:53 UTC

Hi, Fred
    From the acpidump in comment #1 it seems that there is no _PSS object, which is required by the frequency driver. 
    In fact we see this on a lot of boxes based on AMD chipset. This is a BIOS bug and had better be fixed by upgrading BIOS.
    Please forward this info to the BIOS vendor and see whether this can be fixed by BIOS.
    
    Thanks.

Comment 8 Zhang Rui 2009-06-22 01:13:01 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> [Firmware
> Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI _PSS objects in a way that
> Linux understands. Please report this to the Linux ACPI maintainers and
> complain to your BIOS vendor. 

If you run the latest git kernel, you can see this message instead,
"No compatible ACPI _PSS objects found. Try again with latest BIOS."

I'll close this because it's a BIOS problem that we can not fix in Linux kernel.
Fred, please re-open it if you still have any questions...

Comment 9 Mike Edwards 2010-05-15 20:44:48 UTC

I, too have encountered this on a Tyan S2882-D using AMD Opteron 280s.  Currently running a Debian compile of 2.6.32, though judging from the above bug report, a vanilla kernel would present much the same issue.

An earlier kernel (2.6.18 iirc, it's been some time since I booted it) was able to support powernow just fine.  While I understand that this is largely a bios issue, there are two reasons I'm adding to this bug:

1. Tyan has not released a bios update for this board since mid-2006, and is highly unlikely to do so now.

2. The powernow-k8 driver *used* to support this board, but somewhere along the line, something changed in the driver and now it no longer does.  Can we revert to the old behavior?  The hardware (cpu + board) clearly has powernow support, and I'd like to use it.  While I realize that this is older hardware, it's still recent enough that it's not uncommon to find it in use.

I can provide any information necessary to help move this along.  Thanks.

Comment 10 Zhang Rui 2010-05-17 07:36:48 UTC

Created attachment 26406 [details]
please attach all your ACPI tables, using this script.

Comment 11 Mike Edwards 2010-05-18 04:26:33 UTC

Created attachment 26417 [details]
acpi-tables dump