IBM T400, 11.3 M6/M7 Install panics at initializing udev

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hello all,

I have a IBM T400. The 11.3 M6 and M7 install panics during initializing udev. The screen goes black and a power cycle must be performed to restore the machine. I don’t have a serial output on this laptop thus it is difficult to determine the actual reason. I’ve tried booting in text-only mode with no success either.

I’m attaching diagnostic output from a fully functioning 11.2 installation on the system. Output from lspci -v provided too much output and the forums system prevented me from posting. I can post information elsewhere if requested.

TIA,

Ryan

This is my lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:03.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset MEI Controller (rev 07)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5300
15:00.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
15:00.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
15:00.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
15:00.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev ff)
15:00.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 11)
15:00.5 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 11)

Output of /proc/cpuinfo:

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Core™2 Duo CPU T9400 @ 2.53GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 2527.279
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 5054.55
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Core™2 Duo CPU T9400 @ 2.53GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 2527.279
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 5053.75
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Output of /proc/meminfo:

MemTotal: 1996648 kB
MemFree: 987728 kB
Buffers: 35388 kB
Cached: 532704 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 580176 kB
Inactive: 320988 kB
Active(anon): 503988 kB
Inactive(anon): 0 kB
Active(file): 76188 kB
Inactive(file): 320988 kB
Unevictable: 16 kB
Mlocked: 16 kB
SwapTotal: 4192924 kB
SwapFree: 4192924 kB
Dirty: 24 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 333080 kB
Mapped: 110064 kB
Slab: 57684 kB
SReclaimable: 22388 kB
SUnreclaim: 35296 kB
PageTables: 16204 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 5191248 kB
Committed_AS: 1016700 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 356412 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359309035 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
DirectMap4k: 12288 kB
DirectMap2M: 2029568 kB

#2

How confident are you that your installation DVD, or your liveCD was good?

Did you perform the md5sum check of the downloaded file against the md5sum posted on the OpenSUSE web site?

When you burned the CD or DVD, did you burn to high quality +R or -R media (and NOT to an RW) at the slowest speed your burner allows ?

#3

The MD5 sum matched up. I only use DVD+R media. I will try burning at the lowest speed possible using DVD+R media.

Thanks,

Ryan

#4

Does that mean it also had a kernel panic before you could login when booting in text mode?

#5

Here is what happens in noacpi, text mode:

http://bbnx.net/11.3.m7-noacpi-text.jpg

I did redownloaded 11.3 M7. Verified 11.3 M7 with MD5, SHA1, and GPG Signatures. Burned the image with the slowest speed (3x) that my DVD burner would support using DVD+R media. The burned image was sent through a verification pass as well – it passed. The process took about 50 minutes to complete.

The machine appears to hang up right after the ps/2 mouse initialization in noacpi, text mode. The issue that I have is when either hooking an external monitor or using the native built in display, booting right after 1 second of loading the kernel image, the display goes dark and the machine is quiet. Caps Lock and Num Lock keys are also non-responsive as well. I have ran OpenSUSE 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, and 11.3 M4 and M5 without issues (video was slightly choppy in M5)

TIA,

Ryan

#6

Something is wrong. Let’s use the io scheduler as a start marker and the last line in the screenshot above as a end marker.

Have a look at what the 11.2 dmesg looks like on my system:
http://bbnx.net/11.2-dmesg.txt

There is alot missing between our start/end markers in the above screenshot.

#7

I was able to resolve the 11.3 M7 install by doing the following:

Installing the latest bios update from 20-Apr-2010 (v3.16) from lenovo and doing the following in the bios:

  1. Enter BIOS
  2. Config->Display
  3. Set the following parameters:

Default Primary Video Device: PCI Express
Boot Display Device: Thinkpad LCD
Graphics Device: Discrete Graphics
OS Dectection for Switchable Graphics: Disabled

  1. Press F10 to save your configuration
  2. Boot 11.3 M7
  3. After installation of 11.3 M7, the kexec will try and run the newly installed kernel. Your system’s green opensuse display color will turn a rainbow/negative color. At this point, the system is frozen
  4. Power off
  5. Power on
  6. Change boot parameters form 0x367 to 0x356
  7. After system boots, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to change the vga parameter from 0x367 to 0x356.
#8

Interesting …

I assume you had the frozen system in the 1st boot after the BIOS change because you had already installed 11.3 M7 ? … would I be correct in assuming that if 11.3 M7 was installed AFTER the BIOS update, that you would not get the same 1st boot freeze, or would it still happen (due to incorrectly identified VGA parameters?).

If you still get the one-time “freeze” (for a fresh install) this may be worth writing a bug report (guidance here : Submitting Bug Reports - openSUSE you can use your openSUSE forum username and openSUSE forum password when logging on to bugzilla).

Sorry 'bout the wild goose chase suggestion wrt burning CD/DVD at slowest speed and glad to read you came up with a work around. Thank you for sharing your solution.

#9

Sorry about not clarifying this.

Directly after the installation of 11.3 M7, the installer exits and kexec tries to jump to the installed kernel. The installer notifies the user with a message stating that kexec is going to jump to the installed kernel. During this time, you see the VESA “opensuse green console” (not sure what this is exactly called) on tty1. For a brief moment, it appears that the kernel is going to load. Unfortunately, the “opensuse green console” on tty1 turns a rainbow/negative/inverted color and the system doesn’t respond. Caps lock, num lock, moving to an alternate tty (alt-FX), and control-alt-delete don’t work.

I did verify afterwards that the installed system had the appropriate key trap in /etc/inittab for ctrl-alt-del to send the system to init/runlevel 6. Obviously at this point init isn’t accepting any commands, I was left with power cycling the system.

In regards to changing the boot parameters, the boot vga parameters of 0x367 was not available after the modifications to the BIOS noted in step #3 above. Grub did list a number of other modes 0x356 was the closest to 0x367 in regards to console resolution.

I will back up my home dir and wipe my system clean this evening. I will post the results in a couple of hours.

In regards to burning the DVD at the slowest rate, your concern is completely valid and was willing to entertain any options as to remediation of the issue.

#10

I was able to perform a fresh installation. However, I was able to pin point the problem to a possible issue with the KMS implementation in initrd that is on the installation DVD.

The installation completed without any lockups.

Looking at the changes in the kernel, it appears to be related to KMS. I put the BIOS display settings back to factory defaults and used the boot flags ‘nomodeset’ and the DVD booted without issues. Without this flag, the display turns off and renders the system unusable.

The installation DVD may need a closer look as I can boot a fresh install of 11.3 M7 without the need to disable KMS.

#11

It appears the issue has already been reported:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=608300

#12

I have gone ahead and added my information to the ticket as well to help narrow the issue down.