Most recent kernel where this bug did not occur: NA on this hardware Distribution: LinuxMint 4.0 Hardware Environment: Acer 4520 (all stock) Software Environment: Dual-Boot with Vista Problem Description: Kernel hangs on boot at: ACPI: EC: GPE = 0x10, I/O: command/status = 0x66, data = 0x62 Steps to reproduce: I custom compiled the kernel to solve another ACPI issue which I may file a bug report for later. I will try with apci=off momentarily. Oddly enough, when the power button is pressed, the kernel resumes booting and runs as normal! acpi=off results in a kernel panic telling me to run with noapic, running with noapic results in it telling me that I need to run with pnpbios=off. Finally, if I boot with "acpi=off noapic pnpbios=off" it hangs at loading my DVD-ROM, after about 5 minutes it will give an error dealing with a lack of a root file system, (no /dev/sda5). This is the latest kernel, so this should be fixed, unless I did something stupid compiling it, then I should be fixed. :-P Regardless, there have been similar errors on the two stock kernels that shipped with LinuxMint, the 2.6.22.14-generic fails to boot entirely (power button trick doesn't work) and 2.6.22.14-386 works with power button trick, albeit at a different point in the boot sequence. Thanks, Dan O.
Has any version of Linux every booted properly w/o workarounds on this box? What is the difference between 2.6.22.14-generic which "fails entirely" (and how does it fail, does it hang in a different place) vs. 2.6.22.14-386, which you report like 2.6.23.12, hangs at the ACPI EC message and continues upon a power button press? Can you try 2.6.24-rc? There have been some EC issues fixed on Acers in the latest release.
Hey Len, 2.6.22.14-generic is a LinuxMint stock kernel. It would start booting, then fail to detect a /dev/root. Apparently, it wouldn't even recognize the hard drive as a device, thus it failed to boot entirely. I am compiling 2.6.24-rc right now. So far everything has gone as normal. Of note is that I attempted to install Fedora 8 and Fedora 8 Re-Spin (a 12-18-07 update to Fedora 8) and while both installed 100% normal, both failed to boot, both hanging on "/dev/root not found" or similar. Mind you, I have Linux running on 3 other desktops here, one of which runs a web-server, ftp server, acts as a router and HTPC. I've been using Linux for about 5 years now and this is the roughest Linux experience I've had in at least 3 years. Thanks for the reply, Dan
Success!! I have successfully compiled the latest kernel from the Linus git tree: git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git linux26 I used make oldconfig, holding down enter to accept all defaults. I then made about 3 changes. 1. Change the CPU architecture to AMD Athlon 64 / Hammer from Generic. 2. Enable SATA (Prod) support as "built-in" rather than as a module. 3. Enabled ext3 journaling fs support. Believe it or not, this was NOT enabled before, and yes, my root fs is ext3. I also enabled it as built-in. I also enabled a few SATA drivers as built-in where-as before they were listed as module. I then ran: make -j2 make install reboot And what do you know? It runs absolutely fine! Unfortunately, it still hangs on resume from Suspend mode, but I can live with that as long as Hibernate works OK. (Didn't before). Just for the record, the current kernel is now: 2.6.24-rc6 The kernel boots as normal, save for a few PCI warnings. I just wonder whether it was the newer kernel or the changes I made that did the trick. Thanks Len, that was a great idea to try the rc kernel. ;) Dan
Thanks for testing, Dan. As the upstream 2.6.24-rc6 kernel works, we're done here. Re: distros not working on this box. I'm not familiar with the (non-Intel:-) chipset, it might be that upstream has a driver update for it the distros don't have yet. I expect 2.6.24 will ship shortly, and you'll be able to get it included with test releases of FC9 etc.