[Answer] Re: Linux 2.4.24-pre1: Instant reboot

["Kristofer T. Karas" <ktk@enterprise.bidmc.harvard.edu>]

Short answer to my previous post on this subject:

    CONFIG_EDD=y + Athlon + VIA KT266A = triple fault on boot.

Longer answer:

Dick Johnson asked,
> What CPU did you compile it for?

Compiled 2.4.24-pre1 for Athlon/K7.  I also tried it with generic i386,
which made no difference.

Matthias Andree wrote:
> I've seen this, too, with XFS=y and OOM_KILLER=n,

If I didn't have 2 hours sleep, I would have hacked rc.sysinit to
auto-compile my linux kernel with a binary search looking for the
culprit, iterating if the BIOS rebooted an old kernel; but I was too
tired today for scriping foo.  :-)  So I did it the old fashioned way.

Turns out, after about a dozen compile/reboot loops, I narrowed it down
repeatably to the "x86 BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive support" (CONFIG_EDD)
option.  I can turn off just about every .config option, turn that one
on, and the kernel triple faults upon boot.  This is the first time that
a 2.4.x kernel has ever triple faulted on boot on my system.  As
mentioned above, CPU choice makes no difference.

Marcelo:  Perhaps have the author of whatever patch interacts with
CONFIG_EDD work a bit more on getting the patch right for various
platforms.  The (EXPERIMENTAL) feature worked just fine for me on
2.4.22...24.2.23, but the current -pre1 bombs for athlon/via_kt266a.

Kris