Description of problem: The kernel hangs with a hard freeze during init on a clone box with Athlon plain CPU and Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 730 chipset. The VGA console shows "Starting udev:_" where the '_' indicates that the cursor has stopped blinking. Serial console shows no Oops. There is no response to any keyboard entries, including <ctrl><alt><del>, <alt><sysrq>T, etc., even when appending "debug" or "debug=7" to boot command line. The same symptom appears when appending "single" option on the boot command line. On the surface this seems to be a replay of: bug #179601 which was caused by a bad kernel patch. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.17-1.2364 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. boot 2. 3. Actual results: Hang "Starting udev:_"; no response after three minutes. Expected results: Normal boot. Additional info: Last kernel known to work is 2.6.16-1.2289 ("2.6.17-rc6-bit7" ?) I tried to perform git bisect. "git clone git://...", "git bisect start", "git bisect bad 2.6.18" all worked. But "git bisect good 2.6.17" says "fatal: Need a single revision" which stumps me. Suggestions?
Created attachment 132385 [details] git names the first bad commit
Created attachment 132386 [details] .git/BISECT_LOG Log of runs of git bisect.
Created attachment 132387 [details] lspci output lcpsi; lspci -n; lspci -v
At the last 4 ir 5 stages of "git bisect", the blink rate of the cursor on the VGA console was erratic during "Starting udev: _". From about 2 Hz it would slow to 1 Hz (or less) for 5 or 6 seconds, then resume at 2 Hz. Of course, the bad bisects would slow to 0 Hz (no blinking; freeze).
if this still isn't fixed, could you bring it up on linux-kernel ? Thanks.
The problem has disappered from kernel-2.6.17-1.2396.fc6 (and also 2405; 2401 not checked.)