Re: New ASUS 1701 bios for M2N SLI DELUXE

[Yinghai Lu]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Robert Hancock <hancockrwd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Gene Heskett wrote:
>>
>> Hi Robin, David and lkml list;
>>
>> I said I would report.
>>
>> I just reinstalled the 1502 version bios after spending the last 2 days
>> trying to get an hours worth of uptime without an oops.  Gave up.
>>
>> David Newell and I have been trying to find the cause of the oops, but
>> when the compile instructions David is sending me don't work, its a bit
>> difficult to troubleshoot beyond renaming the function just to see if the
>> oops follows the rename, which it does.  And with the boot girations
>> to get a working radeonhd driver now broken again, apparently by the 'make
>> mrproper' that David had me do, I'm now stuck on issue drivers for drm,
>> radeon, and radeonhd and those are noticably slower.
>>
>> So I'm back on the 1502 version of the bios, it does an oops as I sent
>> before right at entering vmlinuz, which marks me tainted, but the machine is
>> dead stable after that.
>>
>> Here is another snip of that to refresh memories:
>> [    0.000000] DMI 2.4 present.
>> [    0.000000] Phoenix BIOS detected: BIOS may corrupt low RAM, working it
>> around.
>> [    0.000000] last_pfn = 0x120000 max_arch_pfn = 0x1000000
>> [    0.000000] x86 PAT enabled: cpu 0, old 0x7040600070406, new
>> 0x7010600070106
>> [    0.000000] ------------[ cut here ]------------
>> [    0.000000] WARNING: at arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mtrr/generic.c:404
>> generic_get_mtrr+0xea/0x120()
>> [    0.000000] mtrr: your BIOS has set up an incorrect mask, fixing it up.
>> [    0.000000] Modules linked in:
>> [    0.000000] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.28.7 #7
>> [    0.000000] Call Trace:
>> [    0.000000]  [<c042858f>] warn_slowpath+0x6f/0x90
>> [    0.000000]  [<c05193b0>] vsnprintf+0x3c0/0x7e0
>> [    0.000000]  [<c0627a00>] panic+0x15/0xee
>> [    0.000000]  [<c041a78c>] pat_init+0x7c/0xa0
>> [    0.000000]  [<c040f9fc>] post_set+0x1c/0x50
>> [    0.000000]  [<c0733f35>] dmi_string_nosave+0x4c/0x6d
>> [    0.000000]  [<c0441031>] up+0x11/0x40
>> [    0.000000]  [<c040f7ea>] generic_get_mtrr+0xea/0x120
>> [    0.000000]  [<c071f91f>] mtrr_trim_uncached_memory+0x7d/0x374
>> [    0.000000]  [<c042e583>] request_resource+0xa3/0x150
>> [    0.000000]  [<c0627af0>] printk+0x17/0x1f
>> [    0.000000]  [<c071be82>] e820_end_pfn+0xb5/0xd3
>> [    0.000000]  [<c0719fc9>] setup_arch+0x501/0xb68
>> [    0.000000]  [<c0428d89>] release_console_sem+0x189/0x1d0
>> [    0.000000]  [<c071d027>] reserve_early_overlap_ok+0x3f/0x47
>> [    0.000000]  [<c07138a4>] start_kernel+0x58/0x314
>> [    0.000000] ---[ end trace 4eaa2a86a8e2da22 ]---
>
> That's not an oops, it's a warning. Those do normally taint the kernel. I
> don't think this should really be a WARN, IMHO, as it's a BIOS bug and not
> the kernel's fault, and it's fixed up the problem. CCing Yinghai Lu, which
> it looks like wrote this warning.

need to tone down the warning?

>
>>
>> So based on that, I'll now go build a 2.6.29-rc8 and see how that runs.
>>
>> The biggest problem with the 2.6.29 series is that apparently, for
>> security reasons, they are now doing a PHY disable in a graceful shutdown,
>> which none of the previous kernels knows how to re-enable.
>>
>> So to reboot to the 2.6.28.7 stable, you have to use the front panel reset
>> button to reboot or you will not have any onboard ethernet until you do a
>> full, pull ALL the power plugs for at least 30 seconds (I go make a cup of
>> tea, about 3 minutes) to reset the PHY's back to operational status. TBT,
>> the reset button is easier.
>>
>> Frankly, that seems like a thoroughly busted security idea, but I suppose
>> we're stuck with it.
>
> I doubt it's for security reasons. Could be due to power management or
> suspend/resume changes?

what is nic? could be put in D3 somehow.

YH
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