Boot problem on PPC with 4.4-git - Bisected to commit 21266be

From: Larry Finger
Date: Wed Jan 20 2016 - 15:01:57 EST


My PowerBook G4 Aluminum with a 32-bit PPC processor fails to boot for the 4.4-git series. The problem was bisected to commit 21266be. It took a while to figure out why a commit that only rearranges the Kconfig files could cause the problem.

The answer came when I read the commit message for 90a545e98126 and saw that "Recompiling with CONFIG_IO_STRICT_DEVMEM=n" might be necessary. After I made that change, the system boots.

If it is the graphics hardware driver at fault, the VGA controller is listed as an ATI RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10] with PCI ID 1002:4350. It uses radeon as the driver.

I'm not sure if this is a bug in the configuration, but I know that selecting the default answer to all the new configuration parameters leaves me with a machine that is unbootable.

Larry