When running several of the later releases of gentoo-sources 2.6.13 and 2.6.14-r1 + r2 releases I've had irq errors asking me to add irqpoll to the kernel params at boot time. Someone suggested at the time that 2.6.14 came out that I add pci=routeirq to the line which resulted in a correctly booting kernel for me, but since 2.6.14-r1 and r2 have been released this same fix has not worked. Adding irqpoll option results in a booting pc but it is unstable. Up until the later realeases of 2.6.13 I had no problems at all with this, and nothing system wise has changed. I can still go back to an old kernel and have it boot fine. With these IRQ errors, I always seem to get a halt on the 2nd of the drives found on my ITE controller chip (not hardware raided or anything). Something somewhere has changed and is causing these problems. I've also seen it on two other machines here at work as well - my personal machine is an Athlon XP on a NForce2 chipset, the ones at work were both P4's on VIA chipsets - so it's not limited to just me, or my processor type, or motherboard. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge >=gentoo-sources-2.6.13-r3 or emerge >=gentoo-sources-2.6.14-r1 2. make oldconfig 3. make && make modules_install 4. cp and reboot Actual Results: Numerous IRQ errors stating to add irqpoll to the boot options - doing so results in an unstable system. Expected Results: Boot a working and stable kernel with no boot params required, like the older versions did. Portage 2.0.53_rc7 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.3.6-r0, 2.6.14-gentoo i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.14-gentoo i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+ Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 distcc 2.18.3 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [enabled] ccache version 2.3 [enabled] dev-lang/python: 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.20 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fvisibility-inlines-hidden" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig candy ccache distcc distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.recoil.net.nz/gentoo http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/gentoo http://planetmirror.com/pub/gentoo http://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/Gentoo http://mirror.isp.net.au/ftp/pub/gentoo/" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" MAKEOPTS="-j5" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://firebird/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 3dnow X alsa apm arts audiofile avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdb cdr crypt cups curl directfb dts dvd dvdr eds emboss encode esd ethereal exif expat fam ffmpeg flac foomatic foomaticdb fortran gd gdbm gif glut gmp gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk2 hal idn imagemagick imlib ipv6 java jpeg kde lcms libg++ libwww lirc mad mikmod mmx mng motif mp3 mpeg mythtv ncurses nls nptl nptlonly odbc ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png ppds python qt quicktime readline recode samba scanner sdl slang spell sse ssl tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb vorbis xine xml2 xmms xv xvid zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LINGUAS AMD AthlonXP 2800+ Gateway GA-7N400 Pro2 As well as 2x late model P4's (not sure of the exact model/speed of CPU) on VIA chipset MB's (an Asus and a Gigabyte board I believe).
Fixed this myself - noticed when compiling a Kernel at work there was this option: CONFIG_IRQBALANCE. Simply removed this option from my .config file and removed pci=routeirq from the boot params and now everything works as it should.
