ACPI Error: A valid RSDP was not found 20090521 tbxfroot-309

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday 09 December 2009 8:52:06 pm Chris H wrote:
> On Wed, December 9, 2009 6:50 am, John Baldwin wrote:
> > On Tuesday 08 December 2009 7:06:18 pm Chris H wrote:
> >
> >> Greetings,
> >> I am receiving the following in dmesg (verbose) during boot in 8-RELEASE
> >> (GENERIC)
> >> cvsuped 2009-12-08 @1am: ACPI Error: A valid RSDP was not found 20090521
> >> tbxfroot-309
> >>
> >> As I create the KERNCONF for this machine, I want to confirm that this
> >> message is caused by the fact that APM is shut off in the BIOS, and won't
> >> cause any averse problems. We're having issues with "timeout" errors on some
> >> 50 TYAN server MB's
> >> since 7-RELEASE regarding the disk media (no matter how many different drives
> >> we use). So as I attempt to create a STABLE - in the sense that the servers
> >> are reliable, I want to eliminate any potential issues.
> >>
> >> more (informational) "noise" follows:
> >
> > You can ignore the message, I do think it is due to disabling ACPI in your
> > BIOS.  Do you have problems when ACPI is enabled?  ACPI is generally going to
> > be more reliable than !ACPI in the future as it seems many BIOS vendors no longer
> > test the !ACPI case as much (e.g. I've seen Intel motherboards with incomplete
> > or incorrect MP Tables because no commercial OS uses the MP Table anymore).
> 
> Hello, and thank you very much for your reply.
>  So the message is simply "informative" - good to know.
> As to the ACPI. Closer examination seemed to indicate the BIOS was incomplete.
> While I could have flashed it, assuming that it 1) would have all current updates
> 2) it would then also be complete
> I opted to simply take another new board off the shelf and try again. This time,
> taking your advice, and /enabling/ full ACPI. I performed an install, and just
> now cvsupped src && ports. It's in the process of building world/kernel as I
> write this reply. Hope all turns out well - "Fingers crossed". :)

Ok.

> If you (or anyone else) can tell me...
> I have had issues with periodic "timeouts" with disks (SCSI,ATA && CD/DVD ROMS)
> ever since late 6. After experimenting with /many/ kernels. I'm left with the
> suspicion the it has to do with SCHED_4BSD vs. SCHED_ULE. In other words, ever
> since SCHED_ULE became default/preferred most of the PIII based boards have
> exhibited this anomaly. Often the "retries" aren't exhausted, and they recover.
> But many times they don't which will lead to freeze that requires "bouncing" the
> machine, and performing FSCK(8). I haven't seen anything in UPDATING. But wonder;
> should I assume that anything in the PIII category /requires/ SCHED_4BSD. Or
> would it be better to tune a kernel via SYSCTL(8)?

Hmmm, there isn't anything CPU-specific in ULE vs 4BSD, and I would expect
ULE to work fine on a PIII.  I would generally expect device timeouts to be
more of a driver issue than a scheduler issue.

-- 
John Baldwin