Freezing system after kernel 3.2

From: Karsten Malcher
Date: Mon Feb 08 2016 - 13:24:11 EST


Hello,

i am sorry, but is it possible that a kernel bug for a special chipset is alive since kernel 3.2?

I have a backup PC with an Asrock ALiveXFire eSATA2 R3.0 mainboard with CPU AMD64 X2 6000+.
Before this mainboard runs very stable with Debian wheezy and kernel 3.2.0.
Now i tried to update to Jessie with kernel 3.16 and the board is crashing within 1-5 minutes after boot!

There is no clear error, mostly the system is just suddenly freezing without any message or log.
Sometimes i get a kernel panic like "fatal exception in interrupt", but the boot parameter "pc=nomsi" has no effect.

I can rule out hardware problems, because the memtest can run for many hours finding nothing.
Additionally i can boot Knoppix 6.7 with kernel 3.0.4 and it is running stable.
But when i boot Knoppix 7.2 with kernel 3.9.6 the system is freezing!
Aditionally i tried out kernel 4.3.0 in Debian but it does not help. Any newer kernel freezes.

I am sure that newer kernel have a problem with this special mainboard hardware.

lspci shows:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI-X Root Port
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 13)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3600 Series
02:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV635 Audio device [Radeon HD 3600 Series]

My hope is that there are known problems with parts of this mainboard hardware?

Best regards
Karsten