[LinuxBIOS] Kernel lock-ups??

[joe at smittys.pointclark.net]

Quoting Stefan Reinauer <stepan at coresystems.de>:

> Uwe Hermann wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 06:31:19PM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
>>
>>> ron minnich wrote:
>>>
>>>> Factory bioses frequently ship with broken IRQ tables. The 'hlt'
>>>> problem is a classic 'clock interrupts are not working' symptom. This
>>>> is good (it's basic) and bad (it can be a bear to debug).
>>>>
>>>> how do vendors get around their own broken tables in the fuctory bios?
>>>> It appears they ignore them and just jam the correct bits into
>>>> correct places. sad, but true. We see it all the time.
>>>>
>>> Vendors also ship with ACPI. As soon as Linux detects a reasonably
>>> complete ACPI implementation, it will not even look at IRQ tables anymore.
>>>
>>
>> I'm curious, can we make the same assumptions for other payloads/OSes?
>> Windows, *BSD, Solaris, Plan 9, OS/2 (yuck), DOS, OFW(?), whatever...
>>
>
> The assumption we can make is: either ACPI or MP+PIRQ have to be there.
> The other assumption is no "legacy" BIOS supports MP+PIRQ anymore.
> So the "legacy" stuff is only actively maintained in LinuxBIOS ;-)
>
> Stefan

Ok, So I will dig into the irq tables and see what I can find. But,  
how do I now this isn't just related to a Read issue with the Upper  
Bios Area 0x0F0000(960K) - 0x0FFFFF(1MB)?? That is why I would like to  
diagnos that first. So I ask is there a way to dump (printk) this area  
in human readable format right after the check_pirq_routing_table()  
function?? Or if I can fudge my way to a linux command line with a  
whole bunch of work arounds can I dump it then to see the issue?

FYI: The original Bios does use ACPI for interrupt & irq routing.
 From the kernel booting:

ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040816
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: Using PIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (00:00)
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:1f.1
PCI: Transparent bridge - 0000:00:1e.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 *7 9 10 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 *9 10 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 3 4 *5 6 7 9 10 11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 *11 12 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) *0,  
disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 14 15) *0,  
disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 *10 11 12 14 15)
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] enabled at IRQ 7
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 7 (level, low) -> IRQ 7
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.0[A] -> GSI 7 (level, low) -> IRQ 7
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] enabled at IRQ 5
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.1[B] -> GSI 5 (level, low) -> IRQ 5
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] enabled at IRQ 9
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.2[C] -> GSI 9 (level, low) -> IRQ 9
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] enabled at IRQ 10
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1d.7[D] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1f.1[A] -> GSI 9 (level, low) -> IRQ 9
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] enabled at IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1f.3[B] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[B] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] enabled at IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:01:08.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11

Thanks - Joe