Re: HDD problem, software bug, bios bug, or hardware ?

On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 04:32:56AM -0700, Adko Branil wrote:

After updating bios no more crashes happened, i tested it many times
on heavy HDD IO loads, with many kernels (including CONFIG_PREEMPT
kernels).

Alriiight, one of the most seldom times where a BIOS update actually
fixes things :-).

But now if enable "Cool'n' Quiet" option in bios, 
CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY kernel with passed "nosmp" at boot time,
crashes during boot process with kernel panic, while  CONFIG_PREEMPT
kernlel without "nosmp" works fine  - but it is another story i
think, should not be related with the crashes when it was old bios,
and i think it is probably "nosmp" the reason.

Hmm, Cool'n'Quiet enabled actually means that you have _PSS objects and
powernow-k8 should be detecting the P-states properly.

Can you catch dmesg from that machine twice?

* one with Cool'n'Quiet disabled
* one with the kernel panic

(i have never changed cpu frequency of this cpu at all) When "Cool'n'
Quiet" is disabled, the system works perfectly adequately with all
kind of kernels i tried. Except that this warning message in dmesg
still appears (if it is problem at all). I put here this message for
"nosmp" case as well, kernel is 3.5.2:

Right, so AFAICU, you can run a CONFIG_PREEMPT kernel perfectly fine now
after the BIOS update, right?

If so and when you say that the oopses started happening after an
electrical instability, I'd venture a guess that something got damaged
in the BIOS EPROM and since you've flashed it anew, the corrupted data
got overwritten and so no more crashes. Correct?

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.