Re: Regression in 5.1.0-rc2: PowerBook G4 Aluminum fails to boot - bisected to commit 0df977eafc792

From: Christophe Leroy
Date: Mon Mar 25 2019 - 02:53:07 EST




Le 25/03/2019 Ã 01:49, Larry Finger a ÃcritÂ:
A build of kernel 5.1.0-rc2 resulted in a failure to boot on my PowerBook G4 Aluminum. The bootstrap loads the initial kernel and issues the appropriate start, but the machine hangs at that point.

Can you please be more explicit ? What do you mean by "issues the appropriate start" ? What is "that point" ? Any messages on the console ?

Thanks
Christophe



The problem does not depend on the choice of PPC32 processor type. This machine has a 7447A according to /proc/cpuinfo.

The problem was bisected to the following:

commit 0df977eafc792a5365a7f81d8d5920132e03afad
Author: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@xxxxxx>
Date:ÂÂ Thu Feb 21 10:37:54 2019 +0000

ÂÂÂ powerpc/6xx: Don't use SPRN_SPRG2 for storing stack pointer while in RTAS

ÂÂÂ When calling RTAS, the stack pointer is stored in SPRN_SPRG2
ÂÂÂ in order to be able to restore it in case of machine check in RTAS.

ÂÂÂ As machine check is not a perfomance critical path, this patch
ÂÂÂ frees SPRN_SPRG2 by using a field in thread struct instead.

ÂÂÂ Signed-off-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@xxxxxx>
ÂÂÂ Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

I reverted this patch and found that the system began execution, and then failed, likely due to the reassignment of SPRN_SPRG2.

I had found this problem with 5.1.0-rc1, but -rc2 was out by the time I finished the bisection. Unfortunately, none of the changes in -rc2 fixed the problem.

Attached is the .config that I used.

Thanks,

Larry