Bug 846453

Summary: kernel since 3.4.x fails to boot: kernel panic - not syncing; Attempted to kill init!
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Mildred <mildred-bug.redhat>
Component: kernelAssignee: Kernel Maintainer List <kernel-maint>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 17CC: gansalmon, itamar, jfeeney, jonathan, kernel-maint, madhu.chinakonda
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Last Closed: 2012-08-08 15:28:00 UTC Type: Bug
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kernel panic photo none

Description Mildred 2012-08-07 20:30:18 UTC
Created attachment 602847 [details]
kernel panic photo

Description of problem: Since kernel 3.4.6-2, kernel fails to boot.
The latest kernel that boots is 3.3.5-5
The latest kernel, 3.5.0-2 also fails

How reproducible: always
Steps to Reproduce: boot with grub
Actual results: kernel panic
Expected results: successfull boot

Additional info:

Booting using Grub 2 EFI on a MacBook 2,1, using EFI legacy BIOS and with a x86_64 kernel and userland.

The GRUB EFI bootloader is 32bits (because EFI is 32bits). So it is taken from the  32bits version of Fedora. GRUB shouldn't be the problem because I can boot older kernels.

GRUB Command line for the kernel that boot:

  fakebios
  set root=(hd0,gpt3)
  linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 ro root=UUID=2b3aaf32-0e95-4f2e-8058-4e6ba811bdf3 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=fr rhgb quiet nohwcrypt=1 11n_disable=1
  initrd /boot/initramfs-3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64.img

GRUB Command line for the kernel that doesn't boot:

  fakebios
  set root=(hd0,gpt3)
  linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-2.fc17.x86_64 ro root=UUID=2b3aaf32-0e95-4f2e-8058-4e6ba811bdf3 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=fr rhgb quiet nohwcrypt=1 11n_disable=1
  initrd /boot/initramfs-3.5.0-2.fc17.x86_64.img

Attached the photo of the kernel panic.

The nohwcrypt=1 11n_disable=1 command line arguments are about a separate issue about ath9k wireless

Comment 1 Josh Boyer 2012-08-08 14:12:39 UTC
backtrace transcribed from the image:

? register_efivars+0xa9/0x3c0
? dmi_sysfs_register_handle+0x1bb/0x1bb
efivars_init+0xa6/0xf3
do_one_initcall0x12a/0x180
kernel_init+0x150/0x1d4
? do_early_param+0x8c/0x8c
kernel_thread_helper+0x4/0x10
? start_kernel+0x3c4/0x3c4
? gs_change+0x13/0x13

Comment 2 Josh Boyer 2012-08-08 15:28:00 UTC
I discussed this with our EFI expert.  Fedora doesn't support mixed sized EFI environments, nor do we support 32-bit EFI in general.  You might be able to work through this with the upstream kernel developers.

Comment 3 Mildred 2012-08-09 07:51:40 UTC
GRUB command line include fakebios, which I believe enables BIOS emulation.
The kernel should boot using BIOS.

I just discovered the noefi kernel command line parameter and i'll try it soon. (I don't have the computer at hand right now).

Comment 4 Mildred 2012-08-09 12:08:30 UTC
Adding "noefi" to the GRUB command line fixes the problem.