Kernel Panic in Ubuntu 16.04 netboot installer

[Tim Gardner]

Hello,

we are working with the Ubuntu 16.04 developer preview. Yesterday we
observed a kernel panic of the installer kernel on one of our machines.
The machine is of type

Supermicro X10DRH LN4/X10DRH-CLN4, BIOS s1.0b 12/01/2015

We are installing the machine via PXEboot with the netboot installer
system using the following kernel/initrd:

dists/xenial/main/installer-amd64/20101020ubuntu446/images/netboot/ubuntu-installer/amd64/initrd.gz
dists/xenial/main/installer-amd64/20101020ubuntu446/images/netboot/ubuntu-installer/amd64/linux

When using this version the kernel crashes (see attached log file). We
have also tried the version 447 instead of 446. This version shows
the same effect.

Some time ago we worked with the installer version 441. This release
worked as expected.

Someone out there knows what has changed? It seems that the kernel has a
problem with the harddisk IO system. In our machine the mpt3sas disk
controller is required to get access to the harddisks.

If I should test some new stuff please let me know. Or if I can help you
in some other way to solve this issue contact me.

Thank you for your help
  Dr. Johann Pfefferl

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

Kamal Mostafa pointed out that the stack trace in https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2016-April/076263.html was remarkably similar to https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/3/16/40

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

x86/topology: Use total_cpus not nr_cpu_ids for logical packages
x86/topology: Fix Intel HT disable

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

Ugh, looking this morning there is a whole bulk of patches referring to be fixes for the initial
  1f12e32f4cd5 ("x86/topology: Create logical package id")

* commit ee6825c80e870fff1a370c718ec77022ade0889b
   x86/topology: Fix AMD core count
* commit ed6069be7204541c1da532ad8bbf892e34513552
   xen/apic: Provide Xen-specific version of cpu_present_to_apicid APIC op
* commit 3e8db2246b434c6b18a6a9f09904038bddcf76c7
   x86/topology: Use total_cpus not nr_cpu_ids for logical packages
* commit 63d1e995be455ae9196270eb4b789de21afd42ed
   x86/topology: Fix Intel HT disable
* commit b5d5f27d938fb6fc8d3202704e699d2694a02da6
   x86/topology: Fix logical package mapping

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

But then 1f12e32f4cd5 ("x86/topology: Create logical package id") is a 4.6-rc1 change which is not in the 4.4.x used in Xenial.

[Dr. Johann Pfefferl (johann-pfefferl)]

I got a request to provide infomation about the kernel version we used so far to boot the system:

Failed: 4.4.0-18-generic
Success: 4.4.0-15-generic

[Dr. Johann Pfefferl (johann-pfefferl)]

I have forgotten to mention that on our machine hyperthreading is disabled.

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

commit 31c2013e4ea2e594522980acc3d20e88664b19f1 ('x86/topology: Create logical package id') was used as a prerequisite patch for bug #1397880 (Memory bandwidth manager). However, being a 4.6-rc1 commit it caused some problems. Subsequent fixup patches are as mentioned in comment #3.

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

x86/topology: Fix AMD core count
xen/apic: Provide Xen-specific version of cpu_present_to_apicid APIC op
x86/topology: Use total_cpus not nr_cpu_ids for logical packages
x86/topology: Fix Intel HT disable
x86/topology: Fix logical package mapping

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package linux - 4.4.0-21.37

---------------
linux (4.4.0-21.37) xenial; urgency=low

  [ Tim Gardner ]

  * Release Tracking Bug
    - LP: #1571791

  * linux: MokSBState is ignored (LP: #1571691)
    - SAUCE: (noup) MODSIGN: Import certificates from UEFI Secure Boot
    - SAUCE: (noup) efi: Disable secure boot if shim is in insecure mode
    - SAUCE: (noup) Display MOKSBState when disabled

linux (4.4.0-20.36) xenial; urgency=low

  [ Tim Gardner ]

  * Release Tracking Bug
    - LP: #1571069

  * sysfs mount failure during stateful lxd snapshots (LP: #1570906)
    - SAUCE: kernfs: Do not match superblock in another user namespace when
      mounting

  * Kernel Panic in Ubuntu 16.04 netboot installer (LP: #1570441)
    - x86/topology: Fix logical package mapping
    - x86/topology: Fix Intel HT disable
    - x86/topology: Use total_cpus not nr_cpu_ids for logical packages
    - xen/apic: Provide Xen-specific version of cpu_present_to_apicid APIC op
    - x86/topology: Fix AMD core count

  * [regression]: Failed to call clock_adjtime(): Invalid argument
    (LP: #1566465)
    - ntp: Fix ADJ_SETOFFSET being used w/ ADJ_NANO

linux (4.4.0-19.35) xenial; urgency=low

  [ Tim Gardner ]

  * Release Tracking Bug
    - LP: #1570348

  * CVE-2016-2847 (LP: #1554260)
    - pipe: limit the per-user amount of pages allocated in pipes

  * xenial kernel crash on HP BL460c G7 (qla24xx problem?) (LP: #1554003)
    - SAUCE: (noup) qla2xxx: Add irq affinity notification V2

  * arm64: guest hangs when ntpd is running (LP: #1549494)
    - SAUCE: (noup) KVM: arm/arm64: Handle forward time correction gracefully

  * linux: Enforce signed module loading when UEFI secure boot (LP: #1566221)
    - [Config] CONFIG_EFI_SECURE_BOOT_SIG_ENFORCE=y

  * s390/cpumf: Fix lpp detection (LP: #1555344)
    - s390/facilities: use stfl mnemonic instead of insn magic
    - s390/facilities: always use lowcore's stfle field for storing facility bits
    - s390/cpumf: Fix lpp detection

  * s390x kernel image needs weightwatchers (LP: #1536245)
    - [Config] s390x: Use compressed kernel bzImage

  * Surelock GA2 SP1: surelock02p05: Not seeing sgX devices for LUNs after
    upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 (LP: #1567581)
    - Revert "UBUNTU: SAUCE: (noup) powerpc/pci: Assign fixed PHB number based on
      device-tree properties"

  * Backport upstream bugfixes to ubuntu-16.04 (LP: #1555765)
    - cpufreq: powernv: Define per_cpu chip pointer to optimize hot-path
    - Revert "cpufreq: postfix policy directory with the first CPU in related_cpus"
    - cpufreq: powernv: Add sysfs attributes to show throttle stats

  * systemd-modules-load.service: Failing due to missing module 'ib_iser' (LP: #1566468)
    - [Config] Add ib_iser to generic inclusion list

  * thunderx nic performance improvements (LP: #1567093)
    - net: thunderx: Set recevie buffer page usage count in bulk
    - net: thunderx: Adjust nicvf structure to reduce cache misses

  * fixes for thunderx nic in multiqueue mode (LP: #1567091)
    - net: thunderx: Fix for multiqset not configured upon interface toggle
    - net: thunderx: Fix for HW TSO not enabled for secondary qsets
    - net: thund...

[Dr. Johann Pfefferl (johann-pfefferl)]

This bugfix solved the problem on our machine!