Bug#611493: dmesg obtained from initrd shell

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi again,

pascal.bernard1@free.fr wrote:

> If it is a hardware problem, I do not see why it doesn't show with
> the Mint system.

>From a certain point of view, even many kernel bugs that have been
fixed are hardware problems.  That is, it can be possible to work
around quirky hardware once problems are well understood.  I agree
that this doesn't sound like just bad memory.

So let's assemble the information so far:

 - problem only is triggered when the root partition is lvm/md

 - problem (usually?) only arises on cold reboot.  Here "cold" just
   means that the machine has not been powered on for long.  For
   example, sitting around in grub for a few minutes or in the
   initramfs for some extra seconds prevents the problem from showing
   up.

 - problem only started showing up about a month ago.  The lvm/md
   root partition is older than that (?).

 - symptoms seem like memory corruption.  I'm not sure if anyone
   analyzed the pattern of corruption (random bit flipping?  memory
   being cleared?  some particular memory pattern?)

I'm not sure what would be a good way to investigate further, alas.
Maybe others have ideas.

 - trying with different hard disks?
 - trying with different LVM configurations?
 - using the same disks in a different machine (i.e., different
   motherboard, BIOS, etc)?
 - investigating the "cold" condition more --- e.g., does sitting
   around in the BIOS setup menu avoid trouble, too?

Thanks for your attention to detail.
Jonathan