Kernel panic!

Benedict_White · 2004-06-25 13:08:33

Hi,

I am just installing a new machine with an intel mother board and a pentium 4 processor.

All goes reasonably well untill I pacman -Syu then reboot when I get a kernel panic reporting some issues with acpi 9which I can't turn off on my board)

Has anyone else had similar problems with a recent pacman -Syu?

xerxes2 · 2004-06-25 13:19:12

don't upgrade your kernel, you can compile your own later on

Benedict_White · 2004-06-25 13:31:40

The problem is that when you do a pacman -Syu it wants to upgrade the kernel, I appreaciate that I can tell it not to (looking up where the config file is) but I was hoping to be able to keep the lot up to date automatically.

sarah31 · 2004-06-25 14:58:39

is there not boot parameters you can pass to turn off acpi?

i appreciate that you don't want to have to maintain many or any of your own packages but in this case you just have to modify the config file and rebuild the kernel package. then add it to your ignore list and the next time the kernel is upgraded check what config changes were made and whetether or not they benefit you then recompile.

xerxes2 · 2004-06-25 21:33:30

yes that is right BW, arch is made for running uptodate but the kernel is a special case, Because things like i.e acpi-stuff is developing all the time and sometimes it just don't work even if it is a newer version.
hope you get it to work again. There is also a wiki-howto how you compile a kernel.

lanrat · 2004-06-25 22:54:38

Problems with acpi/apic in the linux kernel are known from some time. What boot manager are you using? I'm not sure about lilo but in grub you can just add acpi=off apm=off noapic manually during boot. You should also add this to your kernel line in grub menu.lst. My experience is that acpi/apic problems show up and disappear quite frequently :-) On the other hand I've just installed and upgraded arch on one of the severs with acpi, apm and apic turned on and it runs very fine including powering off etc. - no easy rules here.

Benedict_White · 2004-06-26 10:09:49

Ok, so here is the line from /boot/grub/menu.lst

kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/discs/disc0/part3 ro

What do I add to the end of the line? would it be:

kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/discs/disc0/part3 ro acpi=off apm=off noapic

(Without the word wrap?)

lanrat · 2004-06-26 13:44:06

Correct. You don't have to use all the options - first try to use just acpi=off then if this won't help add noapic, etc.
acpi=off turns off acpi in kernel
apm=off turns off apm ("older acpi") in kernel
noapic makes kernel manage irqs on it's own
If you want to know more about those settings search the forums for acpi and apic.
The strange thing is that you can't change acpi settings in your bios - if it's pIV mainboard it should have some settings available. Newer boards also have apic settings in bios. But I guess you just upgraded kernel from 2.4 to 2.6 and got into troubles with acpi - that's what I also experienced on my desktop machine. Remember that you can maintain a few grub setups for each kernel in menu.lst - if you don't want to mess with the settings which worked before just duplicate them and add new things.

Benedict_White · 2004-06-26 15:55:59

Many thanks, using the first two options in the boot loader solved the problem.

Usefull to know I can reconfigure the Kernal to provide a safe mode option like that.

Is there a completly failsafe set of options I can use?

lanrat · 2004-06-26 23:03:25

I don't think there is something like "completly safe set of options" for newest linux kernel or even any linux kernel :-) Most problems (in standard ide kernels at least) come from acpi/apm, apic (irq) or ide (like some mainboards with via/promise chipsets and controllers). The reason may be for example bios incompability. When you will have the troubles with ide drives you can use ide=nodma but this of course slows down drive performance - use this when you will not have any other option. I also don't have any SATA drives but some people have problems with them (but not always). I'm not sure if there is some ultimate and uptodate docs for kernel boot parameters. Usually the best way is to use google. You can also read this howto first http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO.html

lanrat · 2004-06-29 11:17:44

But this is really not arch related problem. It's linux kernel (at least vanilla version) related (check the lkml list, kernel bug tracker and kerneltrap.org for examples). Even more - on other systems it runs without any problems - I have two computers with arch installed and on only on one of them I have to disable acpi. In other words if you use some other distro with newer kernel it will fail in the same way (I tried this with some newest live cds). If you check the install guide you will find now acpi solution in the faq section.

Xentac · 2004-06-29 18:07:30

If you take away the acpi from my kernel, my laptop won't work. It needs ACPI. I think it would be a critical bug to not include ACPI in the kernel. So nyah!

Arch Linux

#1 2004-06-25 13:08:33

Kernel panic!

#2 2004-06-25 13:19:12

Re: Kernel panic!

#3 2004-06-25 13:31:40

Re: Kernel panic!

#4 2004-06-25 14:58:39

Re: Kernel panic!

#5 2004-06-25 21:33:30

Re: Kernel panic!

#6 2004-06-25 22:54:38

Re: Kernel panic!

#7 2004-06-26 10:09:49

Re: Kernel panic!

#8 2004-06-26 13:44:06

Re: Kernel panic!

#9 2004-06-26 15:55:59

Re: Kernel panic!

#10 2004-06-26 23:03:25

Re: Kernel panic!

#11 2004-06-29 11:17:44

Re: Kernel panic!

#12 2004-06-29 18:07:30

Re: Kernel panic!

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