Re: Possible PNP issue on Dell PowerEdge 4200 unless noapic used

[Bjorn Helgaas]

[Resending since gmail made it HTML, which LKML thinks is spam.  sigh]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> (just cc-ing linux-kernel so any work on this gets archived)
> trouble daemon wrote:
>
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Hello Adam and Bjorn. I am sending this email to you as suggested by
> > Jonathan regarding a problem that I was having with Linux on a pair of
> > old Dell PowerEdge 4200 machines that I own (yes, they still run!).
> >
> > I have left the most recent reply between Jonathan and I quoted below,
> > but you can find the original bug report at the Debian bug tracker
> > under bug #586494 [1]. As a brief recap, I have been required to use
> > the noapic kernel option in these systems in order to allow them to
> > boot, and appears to have originated after a commit to the kernel
> > relating to EISA (although it has come to my attention now that PNP
> > may be related as well).
> >
> > As suggested, I have attached a copy of the "quick & dirty" config I
> > used for a vanilla 3.1.0-rc7 kernel I compiled, along with the boot
> > log of the machine, and a diff against the apic log of a working boot
> > of the same kernel when using noapic. One thing that I should mention
> > is that on these dells, I also usually use the pnpbios=off option to
> > hide the pesky warnings on boot, in addition to noapic.
> >
> > I hope these logs help you in some way. If there is anything else you
> > might be interested in knowing or testing, don't hesitate to ask!
>
> Original report: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1000807
> Logs: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=86;bug=586494
>
> > Dan McGrath
> >
> > PS - Not a problem Jonathan, thanks!
> >
> > [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=586494

Dan, can you try the attached patch?  I'm not an MPS expert, but from
inspecting f8924e770, it seems suspect that we used to always set the
mp_bus_not_pci bit, then clear it if we found a PCI bus.  After
f8924e770, we set mp_bus_not_pci for ISA buses, clear it for PCI
buses, and leave it alone otherwise.

Attachment: mps-fix
Description: Binary data