Greetings,
If you're using the linuxbios_reset (kernel linuxbios patch), you can have reset write 0x0e to 0xcf9. That will do a 3 second poweroff instead of a simple reset. That should avoid the issue at least.
G'day, sjames
On 18 Apr 2003, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Jim Garlick garlick@llnl.gov writes:
Sounds very similar to a problem observed on the SuperMicro P4DPR/DPE which has the same winbond sensor chip. The solution was to tell lm_sensors to access the Winbond via ISA rather than I2C.
I think there is also some code in the p4dpr/p4dpe linuxbios port to notice the memory initialization problem and work around it (e.g. wait a while and reset?) The details have faded but you might check the code.
So the details. On Intels ICH3 southbridge there is an smbus/i2c controller that when it sees invalid on the bus it locks up. But it only sees invalid data when you are actually using the bus. Using lm_sensors just increases the probability that the smbus controller will lock up.
At which point a reboot will fail because SPD information cannot be read over the smbus, leading the LinuxBIOS to think you have no RAM.
To the best of my knowledge there is no fix. This is just something that needs to be avoided.
Eric
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