2.6.17 x86_64 regression - reboot fails due to deadlock

["Mr. Berkley Shands" <bshands@exegy.com>]

With a SuperMicro H8DC8 (nvidia chipset), Dual Opteron 285's, 16GB, 
Centos 4.3 -

Under 2.6.16 both the tyan 2895 and the supermicro H8DC8 both will 
reboot corectly,
in kernel/sys.c machine_restart() gets called. But with the changes to 
sys.c under 2.6.17,
a new path is introduced, calling void kernel_restart_prepare(char *cmd)
which calls blocking_notifier_call_chain(&reboot_notifier_list, 
SYS_RESTART, cmd); (line 588)
Which looks at the first element of the notifier list, and blocks 
forever. But ONLY on the supermicro.
The tyan, a very similar motherboard does not deadlock. It returns and 
still calls machine_restart().
So neither reboot nor "shutdown -fh now" actually get to the bios calls.

on the supermicro, (linux-2.6.17/kernel/sys.c)

static int __kprobes notifier_call_chain(struct notifier_block **nl,
                unsigned long val, void *v)
{
        int ret = NOTIFY_DONE;
        struct notifier_block *nb;

        nb = rcu_dereference(*nl);
        while (nb) {
                ret = nb->notifier_call(nb, val, v);         /* this is 
the deadlock for the first entry */
                if ((ret & NOTIFY_STOP_MASK) == NOTIFY_STOP_MASK)
                        break;
                nb = rcu_dereference(nb->next);
        }
        return ret;
}

I see that 2.6.18 reworks this code further.

If I want to hurt myself really, really badly, disabling the call to 
blocking_notifier_call_chain(&reboot_notifier_list,...
restores the reboot/power off functions.

In kdb, the system sits idle awaiting something to schedule, but nothing 
will schedule since there is
a deadlock on the supermicro. Any clues as to how to find which notifier 
is deadlocked?

berkley