Hi, I'm a linux hardware test engineer and I'm also testing Debian on new hardware from time to time. Actually I'm trying to figure out a strange problem:
I have a system that sleeps of when I'm installing Debian/Lenny 32bit. The installation is done by booting the netboot kernel & initrd.gz from PXE and then doing a normal network installation. This task is usally easy, just respond to the dialogs and your system will be installed in around 30 minutes. On this system its different. The progress bars stop until you hit a key on the keyboard (text installer) or move the mouse (graphical installer). Switching to one of the consoles and doing a dmesg there sometimes shows a message that CPU#0 has a soft lockup for more than xxx seconds! So the installation needs a frequent "kick" with the keyboard or the mouse to finish. Once the system is installed I never see this problem again. Would be nice to figure out the "why" behind this problem. My guess at the moment is that it is related to a) the CPU which is a new AMD dual core athlon b) the 2.6.26-2-486 kernel that is used during the installation The later would also explain why the problem doesn't occur anymore once the installation is done, because then the 2.6.26-2-686 kernel is used. To prove this theory I also did a 64-bit installation which luckily uses 2.6.26-2-amd64 for both installation and running system and here everything worked without the kernel sleeping of. So I think there is a sort of "incompatibilty" on new Athlon processors and the -486 kernel from Debian. Question is: Is there a easy (means debian like and good documented) way to build a netboot image with a different kernel architecture. From my understanding this would mean replacing both the kernel image as well as all the modules that are provided from the initrd.gz image. Comments, hints & ideas are welcome. I would really nail down the root cause of this just to be sure about the "why". Here are some details from my tests so far: /proc/cpuinfo (from the -486 kernel): processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 107 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Neo X2 Dual Core Processor L325 stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 1500.020 cache size : 512 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 1 core id : 0 cpu cores : 1 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow up pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch bogomips : 3078.71 clflush size : 64 power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps System-components (lspci): 00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge 00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (Internal gfx) 00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 2) 00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 3) 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 14) 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 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series] 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) 08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) Regards & thanks for the excellent work on the Debian project Rainer -- Dipl.-Inf. (FH) Rainer Koenig Project Manager Linux Business Clients Dept. TSP CLI R&D SW OSE Fujitsu Technology Solutions Bürgermeister-Ullrich-Str. 100 86199 Augsburg Germany Telephone: +49-821-804-3321 Telefax: +49-821-804-2131 Mail: mailto:rainer.koe...@ts.fujitsu.com Internet ts.fujtsu.com Company Details ts.fujitsu.com/imprint.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-boot-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
