faakin 'ell :) woo, ok. setting acpi_os_name="Windows 2009" and also removing vesafb from /etc/initramfs-tools/modules resulted in a boot (attaching dmesg boot which contains two ACPI-related kernel-level warnings). sorry it's an attachment rather than inline. i don't know if it was the setting acpi_os_name or removing vesafb that caused the successful boot - i'll try one without the other on next boot and report if it makes a difference
the ACPI bug still came up at startup time but it was followed by "Firmware Bug BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored" and no "could not execute /init". which is good :) [ 0.810439] ACPI Error: No handler for Region [ECF2] (ffff9d30ee0e89d8) [EmbeddedControl] (20160831/evregion-166) [ 0.810456] ACPI Error: Region EmbeddedControl (ID=3) has no handler (20160831/exfldio-299) [ 0.810469] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC._REG] (Node ffff9d30ee0ea820), AE_NOT_EXIST (20160831/psparse-543) [ 0.814994] ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored only by setting OSI to "Windows 2009" would it boot. setting to Windows 2001, or 2012, or 2015, all failed. suggestion is from here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DSDT mwaa this is scary as hell to have such an expensive ridiculously high-spec'd machine, and it going wrong like this :) but... it's up. once i know it's stable (ish) for a couple days that 4.8.0 bug can be closed, ben. thanks for prompting me to investigate further.
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