From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Nov 21 23:36:32 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 07D911065670; Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:36:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from luigi@onelab2.iet.unipi.it) Received: from onelab2.iet.unipi.it (onelab2.iet.unipi.it [131.114.9.129]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B684A8FC16; Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:36:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from luigi@onelab2.iet.unipi.it) Received: by onelab2.iet.unipi.it (Postfix, from userid 275) id 49A8A7309E; Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:41:04 +0100 (CET) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:41:04 +0100 From: Luigi Rizzo To: Andrew Thompson Message-ID: <20081121234104.GA95875@onelab2.iet.unipi.it> References: <20081121231400.GA94863@onelab2.iet.unipi.it> <20081121232325.GA15258@citylink.fud.org.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20081121232325.GA15258@citylink.fud.org.nz> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Cc: kib@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recent versions of pxeboot hang/panic on AMD platform. X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:36:32 -0000 On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 03:23:25PM -0800, Andrew Thompson wrote: > On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 12:14:00AM +0100, Luigi Rizzo wrote: > > [copying some people involved with recent related commits] > > > > As reported in kern/118222 recent versions of pxeboot hang/panic > > on AMD platform. > > > > Initial reports mentioned that the RELENG_6 versions worked well, > > however i found out that even the recent RELENG_6 code is problematic. > > > > Specifically, the problem i see on two machines with AMD CPU (one > > is an Asus M2N-VM) motherboard netbooting with PXEboot, is that the > > loading of config files or binary modules (kernel, etc.) randomly > > hangs with recent version of pxeboot (RELENG_6, RELENG_7 and HEAD > > all give the same behaviour). > > I have found that the kernel size can trigger this for me, after > reducing the size I didnt experience loader hangs with pxe. You may want > to experiment with this in your investigations. no luck - the hang often occurs as early as while reading loader.conf, which is way smaller than the kernel. Assuming that the interrupt thing is a possible cause for the bug, I can understand that the kernel size can affect the probability of getting an interrupt at the wrong time. There was one bug due to memory overflow that i fixed in a recent commit to head (see boot/common/interp.c), but this only helped on a different amd64 motherboard. cheers luigi