Re: Common boot/shutdown issues with the latest 2.6.37 (Mostly Asus laptops)

[Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@gmail.com>]

On Sunday, January 23, 2011, Richard Schütz wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I'm getting a lot of bug reports about hanging boot/shutdowns on these
>> days.
>> 
>> Most of the affected hardware are ASUS laptops. The problem is that I
>> don't have access to any of those problematic laptops and the users are
>> not able at all to debug/bisect what is going on. However, I have
>> collected dmesgs of good/bad boots, acpidump, etc.
>> 
>> Here are the current status:
>> 
>> "Asus F50SV does not boot unless lapic is passed"
>> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26502
>> 
>> "Regression between 2.6.35-020635-rc1 and 2.6.35-020635 breaks acpi
>> support on Asus X71 laptop"
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-meta/+bug/689796
>> 
>> "Asus N61JQ hangs at shutdown unless lapic is passed"
>> (Not reported upstream yet, I've only downstream bug report which is
>> Turkish)
>> http://bugs.pardus.org.tr/show_bug.cgi?id=15969
>> 
>> "Asus X61S does not boot unless acpi=off is given"
>> (Not reported upstream yet, I've only downstream bug report which is
>> Turkish)
>> http://bugs.pardus.org.tr/show_bug.cgi?id=16322
>> (I've told the reporter to try with nolapic, it will probably fix the
>> issue but until confirmed acpi=off is the only solution. 2.6.36 was
>> fine)
>> 
>> I'll post more bugs in here as I've found them.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>
>Looks like these are all Intel machines. Do they use intel_idle for the
>CPU powersaving features?
>(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuidle/current_driver)
>
>If yes - does booting with intel_idle.max_cstate=0 or
>intel_idle.max_cstate=3 boot parameter help?
>
>It could be related to https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21952
>somehow, which seems to be an 2.6.35 regression.

This hang on shutdown, (I have an asus big board) can it also be caused by 
not having /var as a dir on /? 

After having been burnt by / going read-only, depriving me of the failure 
log, I have always put /var on its own partition, which is unmounted early 
and then halt can't get a lockfile, so it hangs after turning off the 
swaps. I have to hit the hardware reset button from there to complete the 
reboot.

Twould be nice if there was a fix for that. ;)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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