Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 7 Oct 2008 01:10:02 +0200 | From | Andi Kleen <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] x86 ACPI: Blacklist two HP machines with buggy BIOSes (Re: 2.6.27-rc8+ - first impressions) |
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On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 10:39:25PM +0100, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote: > On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, Andi Kleen wrote: > > > The real reason is actually a workaround in the BIOS for problems > > in the older Linux code that caused duplicated timer interrupts. The > > old Linux would fall into "enable both IO-APIC and 8259" fallback mode > > and the resulted in duplicated timer events, which made everything unhappy. > > They instead configured the northbridge in a way that one of the inputs > > is ignored. > > Hmm, working around Linux problems in the BIOS is a new and truly odd > concept to me.
Except perhaps for the cheapest consumer parts and many laptops Linux is definitely on the radar now for many BIOS developers.
> It's not that we are unresponsive or do not take > responsibility for our bugs, is it?
These workarounds are not for mainline kernels but for specific distribution releases (as in "fixes SLES/RHEL x.y" instead of "fixes 2.6.xy")
Even when the distributors update their kernels the old releases do not go away are still used and the workarounds get in.
> > You won't be able to DMI list it, that workaround is widely used > > in lots of different systems. > > Well, perhaps, but the thermal trip point phenomenon seems unique to this > family of systems. The other aspects of the problem do not really matter > anymore as we seem to have addressed them robustly enough now.
When you need DMI entries you clearly haven't.
-Andi
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