Bug 67471 – SATA machine kernel panics with 2.6.8-r4

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description Lee Thompson 2004-10-13 14:43:44 UTC]

I'm running a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard with an Athlon64 3500+ CPU and two SATA drives.  The box kernel panics with 2.6.8-r4, but boots clean with 2.6.7-r14.  The symptoms are identical to other reports

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-October/msg00207.html

While a kernel issue, there are two issues with the gentoo distribution.  First, the 2.6.8 kernel is being considered for the 2004.3 release.  With SATA drives running at 10K RPM showing up cheap, lots of folks will start seeing this issue.

2nd, the 2.6.8-r4 is marked stable for AMD64
http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=gentoo-dev-sources
This should probably be backed out to 2.6.7 since there is no gentoo-sources for AMD64.

Thanks,
Lee Thompson



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install Gentoo on a MTI - K8N Neo2 motherboard machine with SATA drives
2.Try to boot, see kernel panic
3.emerge/compile 2.6.7-r14 kernel, boots clean

Actual Results:  
kernel panic

Expected Results:  
boot :)

[Comment 1 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2004-10-14 07:54:25 UTC]

Is this an nvidia SATA controller? I fixed this in -r9 (I hope...)

[Comment 2 Lee Thompson 2004-10-14 13:40:59 UTC]

Created attachment 41819 [details]
Screen shot of kernel panic with 2.6.8-r9

Yes, its an nVIDIA nFORCE 3 chipset and no, not yet fixed.  I just pulled down
2.6.8-r9.  Still panics.  Uploaded a photo of the panic for your reference.

[Comment 3 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2004-10-14 13:49:15 UTC]

Which driver are you using for your SATA access?

[Comment 4 Lee Thompson 2004-10-14 15:26:56 UTC]

Created attachment 41826 [details]
dmesg of 2.4.7-r14 boot

I uploaded my dmesg output for the 2.4.7-r14 kernel boot.  Don't have a console
cable to hook up and capture the kernel panic output for the 2.4.8 version.

This is an interesting post.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=132990

[Comment 5 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2004-10-14 15:47:16 UTC]

You didn't really answer my question. But I think you are running the old style driver, could you please try the libata sata_nv driver (found under SCSI). You'll need to boot from /dev/sda2 or similar.

[Comment 6 Lee Thompson 2004-10-14 19:32:57 UTC]

Okay - this bug can be nulled out.
Both 2.6.8-4 and 2.6.8-9 kernels boot clean on this motherboard if you get the device drivers right and switch around the device names from IDE (like /dev/hde2) to SCSI (e.g. /dev/sda2)

The kernel gets reconfigured for 2.6.8 

    # CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_SATA is not set
    CONFIG_SCSI_SATA=y
    CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_NV=y

The confusion for me occured during install when the 2004.2 gentoo LiveCD named my SATA drive /dev/hde2 since it is a 2.6.7 kernel.  The 2.6.8 kernel names it /dev/sda2.  After going to a 2004.3 with a 2.6.8 kernel, I think people will have less confusion about this kernel change.

Thanks Daniel for the help.