Bug#627019: several kernel hangs before geting to login

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Will Set wrote:

> I see several segfaults and hangs during boot per each successfult login.

By private email, you said:

 - you have tested some 3.1.0-1-686-pae kernel (I assume
   3.1.0-1~experimental.1 from experimental).
 - unless you add "processor.nocst=1", it reliably hangs at boot time.
 - adding "processor.nocst=1" makes it boot without hanging.
 - in addition to this machine, you have another machine that has an
   i865 chipset.  It produces the same symptoms.
 - in addition, you have a machine with an i915 chipset, which works
   fine, with no need for special boot parameters.

In the bug log, I see:

 - this is an Acer Aspire One AO521, board JV01-NL, BIOS v1.08
 - the chipset is indeed an 82865G
 - oopses are all over the place.  Feels like corruption somewhere.
 - with debug=3, we see that the DMI says this is board D865GRH, BIOS
   BF86510A.86A.0077.P25.0508040031 --- wait, are these even the same
   machine?
 - the other i865 is D865PERLK.

Ok.  The processor.nocst=1 workaround indicates that the ACPI tables
might be incorrect or being incorrectly parsed.  For the D865GBF, such
a problem is being tracked as bug#630031 and upstream bug 38262.
Compare v2.6.22-rc1~1112^2^2 (ACPICA: clear fields reserved before
FADT r3, 2007-04-28).  To move forward on that, the right thing to do
would be to get in touch with Len Brown, for example by answering his
questions from the Fedora bugtracker at
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=727865>.

For the D865PERLK, a quick web search does not show anyone but you
having this problem.

You've said you have three boards you're checking with and only two
exhibit the problem.  I'm not sure where the JV01-NL fits into the
picture.

Anyway, for the future, it would be way less confusing to have one bug
per machine, unless they are identically configured or we can be
reasonably certain for some other reason that the same fix will apply
to all of them.  Please provide a summary of which machines that you
use are affected and not affected, and I can clone this bug and let
you know the bug number assigned to each.

Thanks for your help and patience.

Regards,
Jonathan