Re: Possible PCI subsystem bug in 2.4

From: Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm@xmission.com)
Date: Wed May 09 2001 - 10:45:10 EST


"Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl> writes:

> On 4 May 2001, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>
> > The example that sticks out in my head is we rely on the MP table to
> > tell us if the local apic is in pic_mode or in virtual wire mode.
> > When all we really have to do is ask it.
>
> You can't. IMCR is write-only and may involve chipset-specific
> side-effects. Then even if IMCR exists, a system's firmware might have
> chosen the virtual wire mode for whatever reason (e.g. broken hardware).

Admittedly you can't detect directly detect IMCR state. But
triggering an interrupt on the bootstrap processor local apic, and
failing to receive it should be proof the IMCR is at work.
Alternatively if I'm wrong about the wiring disabling all interrupts
at the apic level and receiving one is a second proof that IMCR is at
work. Further I don't think a processor with an onboard apic, works
with an IMCR register.

What I was thinking of earlier is that you can detect an apic or
ioapic in virtual wire mode, which the current code and the intel MP
spec treats as the opposite possibility.

Eric

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 15 2001 - 21:00:32 EST