Boot fails with APIC enabled on an Asus A7V8X-X Motherboard

[John Doe]

Binary package hint: linux-source

Booting fails when "APIC" is enabled in the BIOS on a system with an Asus A7V8X-X motherboard and an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU. When attempting to boot Ubuntu 6.06.1 and Ubuntu 6.10's "Desktop" CDs when APIC is enabled, the system reboots in less than a second after it gets to the "Loading initrd" part, showing no kernel messages before the reboot (with "quiet" and "splash" removed from the boot options). On an Asus A7V8X-X, the BIOS defaults to having APIC enabled, which means any user who has this same motherboard may not be able to boot Ubuntu 6.06 or 6.10 at all as long as APIC is enabled in the BIOS.

Steps to reproduce on an Asus A7V8X-X motherboard:
1. Reset BIOS to defaults (APIC would be enabled).
2. Boot either Ubuntu 6.06 or Ubuntu 6.10's "Desktop" CD.
3. A second or two into booting, the system reboots.

Booting Ubuntu 6.06's Desktop CD succeeds if any of the below are done:
1. APIC is turned off in the BIOS.
2. "noapic" is used as a kernel boot option.
3. "pci=noacpi" is used as a kernel boot option.
4. "acpi=off" is used as a kernel boot option.

Booting Ubuntu 6.10's Desktop CD succeeds if any of the below are done:
1. APIC is turned off in the BIOS.
2. "noapic" is used as a kernel boot option.
3. "pci=noacpi" is used as a kernel boot option.
On 6.10 only, booting with "acpi=off" results in a kernel panic with a message stating that it is "not syncing: attempted to kill init".

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

dmesg > dmesg.log after a successful boot in Ubuntu 6.06.1 after using "noapic" as a kernel option to get the system to boot.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"lspci -vv" output after a successful boot into Ubuntu 6.06.1 after using "noapic" as a kernel option.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"lspci -vvn" output after a successful boot into Ubuntu 6.06.1 after using "noapic" as a kernel option.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"dmesg" output of a successful boot in Ubuntu 6.10 after using "noapic" as a kernel option

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"lspci -vv" output of a successful boot in Ubuntu 6.10 after using "noapic" as a kernel option

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"lspci -vvn" output of a successful boot in Ubuntu 6.10 after using "noapic" as a kernel option

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

You might want to check to see if there is a bios update, but please attach the output of sudo dmidecode.

thanks
chuck

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

I checked Asus's site for bios updates and I appear to have the latest bios update "1013" installed. They do have a beta bios version "1014.002", but I am not sure if it is safe or not to install that.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"dmidecode" output from a successful boot of Ubuntu 6.06.1 with the "noapic" kernel boot option.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

I am not sure if anything differs between 6.06.1 or 6.10's dmidecode output, so, I ran it in both versions. This attachment is the output of "dmidecode" in Ubuntu 6.10 after booting with "noapic" as a kernel boot option.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

I see that Ubuntu 6.06's kernel was marked as "Fix Committed" on this bug report. Where can I download the fixed kernel or some patch you have against the fixed kernel and test it to make sure it works with APIC enabled on my machine?

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

I am not sure if this will help much, but I used a cheap camera phone to take a picture of some of the messages I see when booting Ubuntu 6.06 with APIC enabled on my system. The last message I see before the reboot (that is if I snapped the picture in time) is "Checking if image is initramfs......it is". Right after that line or so is when the system reboots when APIC is enabled.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

This bug also occurs with Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" Beta. With APIC enabled (when my bios is reset back to factory defaults), attempts to boot Ubuntu 7.04 beta result in a reboot instead of booting just like prior versions of Ubuntu. Passing the kernel command line options "acpi=off" or "pci=noacpi" allow the boot to procede when APIC is enabled.

I will attach relevant logs from Ubuntu 7.04 beta's kernel.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"sudo dmidecode" output on Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" Beta "Desktop" CD.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"lspci -vv" output on Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" Beta "Desktop" CD.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"lspci -vvn" output on Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" Beta "Desktop" CD.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

"dmesg" output on Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" Beta "Desktop" CD with the kernel command line option "pci=noacpi" passed to it on boot.

[John Doe (johndoedoejohn)]

I tested the latest beta bios for my machine (1014.002) and it still reboots whenever I boot into linux when APIC is enabled in the bios. Disabling APIC in the bios or using one of the kernel options I mentioned before allows me to boot my machine just fine.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux-source-2.6.17 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi John,

Now that the 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu is out, we were wondering if you can still reproduce this issue. Could you please download and try the new version of Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and report back your results. If the issue is still present in the new release, please attach the
following information for the new release:

* uname -a > uname-a.log
* cat /proc/version_signature > version.log
* dmesg > dmesg.log
* sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log

Please be sure to attach each file as a separate attachment. For more information regarding the kernel team bug policy, please refer to
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies . Thanks again and we appreciate your help and feedback.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

This bug report is being closed because we received no reponse to the last inquiry for information. Please reopen it if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Please don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future, we really appreciate it. Thanks again!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

[Patrick Brueckner (madmuffin)]

I'm still getting this problem with both 8.04 and 9.04 beta.
Disabling apic let me boot the computer, but I wont be able to access all devices.

[Patrick Brueckner (madmuffin)]

One more information: I was able to install 9.04 beta with acpi=off option. The new kernel works flawless without this option, but the installer would fail without this option.

[kernel-janitor (kernel-janitor)]

Hi johndoedoejohn,

Please be sure to confirm this issue exists with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ . Please then run following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux-image-`uname -r` 70774

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in supported series, please file a new bug.