When I boot the 2008.0-r1 amd64 LiveCD on our server it hangs immediately after kernel loading, blank screen, no printk's. When I specify "iommu=off" it boots normally. I suspected this must be already known and I've been g00gling around but haven't found any specific information so far. Platform is Intel S3210SHLX with a Core2 Q6600 CPU and 8GB RAM. Unfortunately it is a 24/7 production server so I don't have the possibility to experiment with various kernels etc. Now running a 2.6.27-r9 without any IOMMU support compiled in, no problems so far. It would be nice to hear from someone who has seen this and to know whether this is gentoo-specific or whether it has already been fixed upstream etc. I didn't want to ask on LKML until it is clear that it is upstream. Please advise! Reproducible: Always
LiveCDs are no longer supported, but there you go.
Can we get an official, front page announcement thereof, please?
(In reply to comment #2) > Can we get an official, front page announcement thereof, please? Or am I confusing GLI and LiveCD?
You're confusing it with GLI. The LiveCD itself is supported. We just won't be building a new one for a while. If you would, please try to boot this: http://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/amd64/autobuilds/20090226/install-amd64-minimal-20090226.iso It should be using around the same kernel version as you are currently running but still have IOMMU support.
Recently I've updated all the firmwares on the S3210SHLX board to the very latest from Intel and now LiveCD doesn't hang anymore, it works seamlessly without "iommu=off". I couldn't spot a word about any similar issue in the relnotes of the firmware update package though: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/17333/eng/release.txt I don't know whether this should be considered a WONTFIX or what... Please somebody @ Gentoo handle this bug appropriately.