ACPI blacklist - important?

[Scott Lipcon]

On 4/1/06, Nate Lawson <nate at root.org> wrote:
>
> Scott Lipcon wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've got a question, and I have to admit I really don't know much about
> > ACPI, but I'd appreciate any advice.
> >
> > My email server was an Athlon XP running FreeBSD 5.4-STABLE, and the
> > motherboard died.  I put the disks in an old machine, which is an ASUS
> P2D-B
> > board, dual 350Mhz PII.  It panic'ed on boot, saying the ACPI
> implementation
> > was on the blacklist.  I was able to figure out how to disable the
> blacklist
> > check ("set hint.acpi.0.disabled=0") and it booted up and seems to be
> > running OK.
>
> If you upgrade the BIOS, the message will likely go away.



I'm running the 2nd latest BIOS - the board is quite old, and the latest
BIOS is 4 years old.  The change log doesn't say anything useful.


The blacklist check should NOT panic, it should just boot with acpi
> disabled.  So please give the panic message and any associated info
> (i.e. trap frame).


I wrote it down so this might not be exactly right, but its close:


ACPI APIC table (ASUS P2B D)
ACPI Disabled by blacklist.  Contact BIOS vendor
MADT: ACPI startup failed with AE_ERROR
Try disabling either ACPI or apic support.
panic.  Using MADT but ACPI doesn't work.



> My question is - what is the side-effect of having this blacklisted ACPI
> > implementation running?   My kernel is a single CPU kernel (since my
> Athlon
> > was only single CPU) so if the lack of SMP has any effect I'd like to
> know.
> > Specifically, is this setup likely to be stable?   I'm certainly
> planning on
> > replacing the Athlon motherboard with a new board/CPU, but I'm going out
> of
> > town this week and probably wont have time to get replacement parts
> before I
> > leave, and I'd really like to have some confidence that my email server
> will
> > stay up while I'm gone.
>
> Different machines are blacklisted for various reasons.  I believe the
> ASUS P2* series had a bad interrupt routing table, possibly for the SCI.
>   That would mean that it could be unstable with acpi *enabled*.  So
> disabling acpi should be perfectly safe, stable, etc.  That's what the
> blacklist entry is supposed to do.  We need to fix the panic problem, so
> please provide that info when you get a chance.



Perhaps this is related then - when I disabled the blacklist check, and it
didn't panic, during the boot I get:

Timecounter "TSC" frequency 350797176 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
Interrupt storm detected on "irq20: acpi0"; throttling interrupt source

Since then, no related messages, and the system seems to be running OK (15
hr uptime).

This is a dual CPU board, but since I'm booting it from the disk from my
athlon, its a single processor kernel - would that have any affect on its
stability?    I can provide my kernel config if anyone can suggest changes -
like I said, I most concerned that it stay up for the next two weeks.

thanks,

Scott