linux-next boot failure on 64-bit Sony Vaio (maybe x86 related)

linux-next boot failure on 64-bit Sony Vaio (maybe x86 related)

[Carlos R. Mafra]

Hi everybody,

The linux-next tree for 1st of July fails to boot on my Vaio laptop, it
stops booting with the keyboard leds blinking.

I can see that there are a few backtraces printed to the screen 
before the last one, but I could only take a picture of the final
state:
http://www.ift.unesp.br/users/crmafra/failed_boot.jpg

This last warning is on arch/x86/kernel/smp.c:118 and the kernel
reports it is tainted, but I am sure it is a vanilla linux-next with
no proprietary stuff.

I could not bisect this problem yet because the first linux-next
which I tried to use was next-20080618 which had a similar boot
failure, that time at kernel/smp.c:215
http://www.ift.unesp.br/users/crmafra/failed_boot0.jpg

(I did not report it back then because I am writing my thesis and
the deadline is close...)

I used the same .config as the working 2.6.26-rc8 and I did
nothing fancy with the new config options of -next
http://www.ift.unesp.br/users/crmafra/config-failed.txt

The dmesg of 2.6.26-rc8 is here:
http://www.ift.unesp.br/users/crmafra/dmesg-good.txt

I tried to boot with 'nosmp' but it also failed.

Regards,
Carlos

Re: linux-next boot failure on 64-bit Sony Vaio (maybe x86 related)

[Carlos R. Mafra]

 
> I could not bisect this problem yet because the first linux-next
> which I tried to use was next-20080618 which had a similar boot
> failure, that time at kernel/smp.c:215
> http://www.ift.unesp.br/users/crmafra/failed_boot0.jpg

Ok, I spent some time compiling and found out that

-next-20080424 is good
-next-20080428 is bad

and all kernels after 20080428 that I've tried failed to boot.

The problem with 20080428 is a NULL pointer dereference:
http://www.ift.unesp.br/users/crmafra/img_2436.jpg

and this is apparently the same error as current 20080702 when
booted with the 'nosmp' parameter:
http://www.ift.unesp.br/users/crmafra/img_2425.jpg

The sad thing is that these are the last messages on the screen,
but there were others before them (I think that's why it says
it is tainted).