On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 04:58:16PM +0000, Matthew Garrett
wrote:
>
> Thomas E. Vaughan wrote:
> 
> >PnPBIOS: PnP BIOS version 1.0, entry 0xf000:0x6d5a, dseg 0xf000
> >general protection fault: 0000 [#1]
> 
> There have been problems with PnP BIOS support on various
> motherboards.  Try rebuilding the kernel package without
> PNPBIOS support (you probably don't need it - it's there
> in order to manage resource allocation for legacy hardware
> like serial ports, and in most cases the BIOS will happily
> set those up on its own) and see if that works.

That did the trick.  The only config option that matters is

   "Plug and Play BIOS support (EXPERIMENTAL)",

which must *not* be selected.  I noticed that the top-level

   "Plug and Play support"

and also

   "ISA Plug and Play support (EXPERIMENTAL)"

can be selected, and the kernel still boots OK.  But that
PnPBIOS support crashes the kernel hard.

Is it reasonable to request that Herbert Xu, or whoever is
in charge of configuring the relevant Debian kernels, turn
off the PnPBIOS support until this is fixed upstream.
Should someone (like me) file a bug report?  If so, then
against which package?

> If so, send a copy of the oops and your kernel version to
> linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org and the kernel developers
> will deal with it.

I'll attach my original report to this message and copy it
to linux-kernel.

> Another thing worth trying is to make sure your BIOS is
> fully up to date.

What's the best way of doing that?  I just bought this
2.8-GHz Pentium 4 machine in mid-December from Best Buy, so
I don't imagine that the BIOS is particularly old, but I
don't know how to tell.

-- 
Thomas E. Vaughan   (303) 939-6386   Ball Aerospace, Boulder