Kernel locks up when idle on VIA-nano U2300 with VIA VX800 on Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF mainboard

Kernel locks up when idle on VIA-nano U2300 with VIA VX800 on Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF mainboard

[Martin Mueller]

Hi all,

last Thursday my mini-ITX board in my home-server died and I had to
get a replacement board. I got an fanless Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF from a
local Dealer. The board uses a 1GHz U2300 VIA-nano CPU[1] and an VIA
VX800 chipset. After replacing the board, the adventure actually
started:

Booting my installed debian with kernel 2.6.29-1-686 (debian kernel) failed.
The system just hang when detecting the harddisks during the boot
process, no oops, no messages, just no reaction any more. 

Fortunatelly I had an old 2.6.23-1-686 (debian kernel) still hanging around
in the grub menu. This kernel works flawlessly on the board (aside
from not recognizing the VIA HD-audio, which doesn't bother me at the
moment).

Next, I downloaded linux-2.6.30-rc3, compiled a minimal version with
just initrd. I left out PCI-support, ACPI and almost everything else
menuconfig allowed me to unselect except the VGA text console. This
kernel locked up after giving me the initial prompt from busybox in
the initrd.

When adding the following lines in the script executed by the kernel
after booting in the initrd, the system actually works:

  while true; do true; done &
  /bin/sh

As soon as I kill the shell loop, the system freezes again.

So my conclusion is: the kernel locks up the first time the CPU
is idle.

Any hints on how to proceed from here?

Thanks.

bye 
  MM


[1] cato:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : CentaurHauls
cpu family      : 6
model           : 15
model name      : VIA Nano processor U2300@1000MHz
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 997.535
cache size      : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 10
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm syscall nx fxsr_opt rdtscp lm up pni monitor vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr rng rng_en ace ace_en ace2 phe phe_en lahf_lm
bogomips        : 1996.78
clflush size    : 64
 

Re: Kernel locks up when idle on VIA-nano U2300 with VIA VX800 on Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF mainboard

[Jeffrey Cao]

On 2009-04-26, Martin Mueller <mm@sig21.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> last Thursday my mini-ITX board in my home-server died and I had to
> get a replacement board. I got an fanless Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF from a
> local Dealer. The board uses a 1GHz U2300 VIA-nano CPU[1] and an VIA
> VX800 chipset. After replacing the board, the adventure actually
> started:
>
> Booting my installed debian with kernel 2.6.29-1-686 (debian kernel) failed.
> The system just hang when detecting the harddisks during the boot
> process, no oops, no messages, just no reaction any more. 
>
> Fortunatelly I had an old 2.6.23-1-686 (debian kernel) still hanging around
> in the grub menu. This kernel works flawlessly on the board (aside
> from not recognizing the VIA HD-audio, which doesn't bother me at the
> moment).
>
> Next, I downloaded linux-2.6.30-rc3, compiled a minimal version with
> just initrd. I left out PCI-support, ACPI and almost everything else
> menuconfig allowed me to unselect except the VGA text console. This
> kernel locked up after giving me the initial prompt from busybox in
> the initrd.
>
> When adding the following lines in the script executed by the kernel
> after booting in the initrd, the system actually works:
>
>   while true; do true; done &
>   /bin/sh
>
> As soon as I kill the shell loop, the system freezes again.
>
> So my conclusion is: the kernel locks up the first time the CPU
> is idle.
>
> Any hints on how to proceed from here?
>

This seems something to do with the board and the hard disk drive.
Do you attach the hard disk to the board correctly? Is there any jumper settings
on the board? Is there any additional module needed by your new board? You can
boot a live CD (Ubuntu is a nice one, it is built with most latest kernel and 
modules) and try to mount your hard disk to make sure the hardware is OK. If this
works, then try to figure out which module is missing in your old kernel.

Jeffrey

Re: Kernel locks up when idle on VIA-nano U2300 with VIA VX800 on Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF mainboard

[Martin Mueller]

Hi Jeffrey,

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 12:25:51PM +0000, Jeffrey Cao wrote:
> On 2009-04-26, Martin Mueller <mm@sig21.net> wrote:

> > Next, I downloaded linux-2.6.30-rc3, compiled a minimal version with
> > just initrd. I left out PCI-support, ACPI and almost everything else
> > menuconfig allowed me to unselect except the VGA text console. This
> > kernel locked up after giving me the initial prompt from busybox in
> > the initrd.
> >
> > When adding the following lines in the script executed by the kernel
> > after booting in the initrd, the system actually works:
> >
> >   while true; do true; done &
> >   /bin/sh
> >
> > As soon as I kill the shell loop, the system freezes again.
> >
> > So my conclusion is: the kernel locks up the first time the CPU
> > is idle.

> This seems something to do with the board and the hard disk drive.

Thanks for your suggestion, but it has nothing to do with the hardisk.
As I wrote above, the problem is reproducible with only an initrd, vga
text console, keyboard and no other driver loaded or compiled in.

The kernel freezes as soon as it get's idle the first time.

bye
  MM

Re: Kernel locks up when idle on VIA-nano U2300 with VIA VX800 on Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF mainboard

[Chuck Ebbert]

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:06:02 +0200
Martin Mueller <mm@sig21.net> wrote:

> Hi Jeffrey,
> 
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 12:25:51PM +0000, Jeffrey Cao wrote:
> > On 2009-04-26, Martin Mueller <mm@sig21.net> wrote:
> 
> > > Next, I downloaded linux-2.6.30-rc3, compiled a minimal version with
> > > just initrd. I left out PCI-support, ACPI and almost everything else
> > > menuconfig allowed me to unselect except the VGA text console. This
> > > kernel locked up after giving me the initial prompt from busybox in
> > > the initrd.
> > >
> > > When adding the following lines in the script executed by the kernel
> > > after booting in the initrd, the system actually works:
> > >
> > >   while true; do true; done &
> > >   /bin/sh
> > >
> > > As soon as I kill the shell loop, the system freezes again.
> > >
> > > So my conclusion is: the kernel locks up the first time the CPU
> > > is idle.
> 
> > This seems something to do with the board and the hard disk drive.
> 
> Thanks for your suggestion, but it has nothing to do with the hardisk.
> As I wrote above, the problem is reproducible with only an initrd, vga
> text console, keyboard and no other driver loaded or compiled in.
> 
> The kernel freezes as soon as it get's idle the first time.
> 

Adding idle=halt to the boot options works. idle=nomwait should work too but
it doesn't.

Re: Kernel locks up when idle on VIA-nano U2300 with VIA VX800 on Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF mainboard

[Martin Mueller]

Hi,

On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 08:19:51PM -0400, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:06:02 +0200
> Martin Mueller <mm@sig21.net> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Jeffrey,
> > 
> > On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 12:25:51PM +0000, Jeffrey Cao wrote:
> > > On 2009-04-26, Martin Mueller <mm@sig21.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > > Next, I downloaded linux-2.6.30-rc3, compiled a minimal version with
> > > > just initrd. I left out PCI-support, ACPI and almost everything else
> > > > menuconfig allowed me to unselect except the VGA text console. This
> > > > kernel locked up after giving me the initial prompt from busybox in
> > > > the initrd.
> > > >
> > > > When adding the following lines in the script executed by the kernel
> > > > after booting in the initrd, the system actually works:
> > > >
> > > >   while true; do true; done &
> > > >   /bin/sh
> > > >
> > > > As soon as I kill the shell loop, the system freezes again.
> > > >
> > > > So my conclusion is: the kernel locks up the first time the CPU
> > > > is idle.
> > 
> > > This seems something to do with the board and the hard disk drive.
> > 
> > Thanks for your suggestion, but it has nothing to do with the hardisk.
> > As I wrote above, the problem is reproducible with only an initrd, vga
> > text console, keyboard and no other driver loaded or compiled in.
> > 
> > The kernel freezes as soon as it get's idle the first time.
> > 
> 
> Adding idle=halt to the boot options works. idle=nomwait should work too but
> it doesn't.

Thanks for your suggestion it worked fine. Yesterday I did a BIOS
update (A03) from jetway, which contained a microcode update for the
CPU. Since then it also works without this bootparam.

bye
  MM
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