On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 19:46 +0800, Sam Ruby wrote: > yakui_zhao wrote: > > On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 07:50 +0800, Sam Ruby wrote: > >> Len Brown wrote: > >>>>> Do you have a second computer around with a serial port ? If yes, then > >>>>> please add the following to the kernel command line: > >>>>> > >>>>> earlyprintk=serial,ttyS0,115200 apic=debug > >>>>> > >>>>> and connect the serial ports with a null modem cable. Fire up a > >>>>> terminal program on the second machine and capture the output. > >>>> I do have a second computer, and went out and bought a null modem adapter for > >>>> my serial cable and connected the two machines. I've tried installing minicom > >>>> and also connecting it to ttyS0 at 115200 baud on the second machine, but when > >>>> I boot the first machine I don't see any output on the terminal. > >>> /boot/grub/menu.lst: > >>> > >>> serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1 > >>> terminal --timeout=300 serial console > > Do you have an opportunity to try the boot option of "acpi=off" as > > suggested by Lenb? > > That also produces the "MP-BIOS bug" message and halts. Do you mean that the box still can't be booted with ACPI disabled? If so, it should be a BIOS bug. It had better be fixed by bios upgrading. From the following test it seems that there exists the MPS table, which describes how the timer is connected with I/O APIC. But unfortunately it is still incorrect. And the timer still can't work w/o the timer override. Only when I/O apic is skipped can the box be booted. The timer is connected with 8259. And the timer can work as expected. But there still exist other issue. > > > From the log it seems that there exists the following warning > > message: > > >MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC > > > > Can you try the following boot options? > > a. acpi_use_timer_override > > That also produces the "MP-BIOS bug" message and halts. > > > b. acpi_skip_timer_override > > That also produces the "MP-BIOS bug" message and halts. > > > c. noapic > > With that, I can boot, but I get data corruption problems. Data > corruption problems I don't see when using the same hardware but with > Microsoft Vista. More details can be found here: > > http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/01/20/noAPIC > http://intertwingly.net/stories/2009/01/22/ > > I am willing to install new kernels on fresh hard drives, run diagnostic > programs and report the output, including capturing serial output. Is > there any data I can gather to help diagnose this problem? > > > Thanks. > >>> is what I use. > >>> > >>> this will give you a prompt from grub even before the kernel boots > >>> so you can select (and edit) your kernel via menu over the serial line > >>> if you wish. > >> I've got that working now. I used minicom on the remote machine, > >> capturing the output. You can see me fumbling around, editing the > >> kernel command and booting here: > >> > >> http://intertwingly.net/stories/2009/02/09/minicom.out > >> > >> While it is difficult to make out what I did given line wrapping, etc, > >> what I started with was: > >> > >> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic > >> root=UUID=4fce230e-fe72-4685-aab0-294ef1c20efa ro noapic quiet splash > >> > >> After editing, what I had was > >> > >> /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic > >> root=UUID=4fce230e-fe72-4685-aab0-294ef1c20efa ro quiet splash > >> earlyprintk=serial,ttyS0,115200 apic=debug > >> > >> As you can see, the last line I saw was "Starting up ...", after which > >> point the "MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC" etc output > >> appeared on the monitor that is directly connected to the machine being > >> booted (i.e., this text did not appear on the minicom session). > >> > >>> If this doesn't work, then the kernel earlyprintk is unlikely to work > >>> also. > >> At the moment, it looks like it works, but earlyprintk does not work for > >> me, at least not on Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic. > >> > >>> Note that there may be some BIOS SETUP options related to the serial port > >>> -- worth checking. > >>> > >>> Also, in minicom, be sure to turn off HW flow control > >>> > >>> there is a fancy serial console document someplace on this, > >>> probably at http://tldp.org/ > >> As I have managed to get grub to talk to the serial console, I did not > >> explore these options further. Please let me know if there is something > >> in particular I should explore. > >> > >>> good luck, > >>> -Len > >> - Sam Ruby > >> -- > >> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-acpi" in > >> the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > >> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > > - Sam Ruby -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-acpi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html