ATA and APIC IRQ conflict

[Alexander Sack]

David:

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 9:25 AM, David Naylor <naylor.b.david at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I am trying to install FreeBSD on a gigabyte board (based on nForce 650i
>  chipset (with MCP51 controller)) however no SATA hard drives are detected.
>  However, if APIC is disabled then I have access to the hard drives (and only
>  one CPU).  It has been suggested that it is an IRQ conflict (or something
>  else related to APIC).

I'll bet its interrupt routing more than IRQ conflicts (which these
days on a modern system really doesn't make sense).  More than likely
there is some funkiness going on with the BIOS's ACPI tables (I would
start with the MADT and verify its entries look kosher).

Though it could be a power management problem and have nothing to do
with interrupts (though with the SATA hard drives not being detected I
would guess its interrupts).

>  Could someone please point me in the right direction so that I could try fix
>  this problem (i.e. how to change the IRQ of the ATA drivers or where to
>  fiddle with APIC to try get it to work?)

I would read this:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/acpi-debug.html

I would definitely set ACPI_DEBUG=1 and go from there.  Perhaps if you
can start dumping the AML on your system (acpidump) and any messages
you get on the console (dmesg etc.) you can post them here.  Also let
us know what kind of BIOS options you have revolving ACPI, power
management, and any legacy settings (e.g. MPS Table options if any).

Without more information its hard to say what exactly is your problem
other than disabling ACPI kinda fixes it.

Also, PLEASE CHECK GIGABYTE's motherboard web page for any BIOS
updates that have been released.  Typically BIOS updates fix these
kinds of problems.

-aps