V3.3-rc6 still crashes, irregardless of RC6 being enabled/disabled.

With persistent booting I was able to get a panic [1] showing with 3.3.0-030300rc4, and it looks the same as what the dmesg I posted in #29 [2] showed: print_bad_pte+0x187/0x1e0 is on top the Trace. Despite the numerous boots I was still unable to reproduce the initial printk+0x2d/0x2f, so it may be fixed in Main or masked by the print_bad_pte+0x187/0x1e0 (though this still is based only on two datapoints in a frustratingly random issue).

Whether RC6 is enabled or disabled doesn’t seem to have bearing on this. 3.2.0-17 produces printk+0x2d/0x2f either way [3], and 3.2.0-18.28 also panics, though less consistently: I was only able to produce a sure printk+0x2d/0x2f once [4], with 3.2.0-18.28 non-pae. Mostly the errors fail to reveal themselves, and when they do, they are different from printk+0x2d/0x2f but also from each other: a couple of times a warn_slowpath_common+0x72/0xa0 (as in Bug #917668, though the hardware and pointers are different) occurred [5], and once it was a Bad page map [6] in unity-greeter.

* [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/926007/comments/32
* [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/926007/comments/29
* [3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/926007/comments/33
* [4] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/926007/comments/34
* [5] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/926007/comments/35
* [6] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/926007/comments/36

I’ll upload a bunch of new screenshots for reference. They’re all related to testing this so bear with me, I’ll explain them further after uploading.

I tested 3.3.0-030300rc4 and couldn’t verify that the panic that all the 3.2’s above have is still present. Unfortunately I couldn’t prove it doesn’t either: with -intel, the first boot resulted in the ’low graphics mode’ failsafe dialog with Traces in dmesg (I’m attaching it). All subsequent boots resulted in panics that didn’t reveal a Trace, so they may or may not have been the one at hand. The panics still occurred when LDM should’ve launched, visually it either just showed the last lines of boot log or that with the mouse cursor. (The what’s-that-key was also blinking on the keyboard.)

I’ve been waiting for an i386 build of RC5 to appear in the directory but it hasn’t. Should I try RC4 instead or keep waiting until a newer i386 build appears? AMD64 isn’t supported by the processor.

Unfortunately I didn’t make a note of when exactly the issue began. But I can give you a timeframe: it wasn’t there when I filed Bug #903831 on 2011-12-13, probably still not there on 2011-12-16 when I made comment #5 on the bug, and probably was there when I made comment #7 on that bug on 2012-01-06. (I’m being cautious with the ’probablies’ because of all the overlapping issues here.)

@jsalisbury: Yeah, my Intel hardware’s got its own set of problems. :) I’ll get back to doing tests on those later this week.

Okay, I’ve tested 3.2.0-13.22 and the results are… annoyingly varied. Mostly the boots ended in a black, nonresponsive screen. On a couple of such boots, I was able to ssh in and get some logs. I’ll attach them.

On one boot, there was a Trace different from the panic I reported. I’ll attach a picture.

On yet another boot, the same panic was there just as in my shots above, just after ”Starting CUPS” this time. I’ll attach a picture of that too just for completeness’ sake.

So the issue is definitely still there, either it just now manifests itself in slightly more random ways or is clouded by others. I tried -12 again too and that immediately produced the panic, so it’s more consistent in that respect.

On a positive note, fbdev still Just Works.

@Bryce, this really is a messy one: I’ve so far dissected three overlapping issues ((Bug #926007, Bug #926012 and Bug #926028) which have hindered my attempts to assist in debugging the one I originally laid down in this report. :)

(Filing this a a separate issue as suggested by Bryce Harrington in comments of Bug #903831.)

With the -intel driver specified in xorg.conf (or without an xorg.conf so that -intel is used), booting Precise with the current 3.2.0-12 always results in a kernel panic. I’ll attach a couple of shots I took of two instances (although to me the panic looks the same in both cases).

This began within the Precise cycle: with the early kernels I was able to boot fine, although Bug #903831 did come up then.

I have yet to try 3.2.0-13 which has just been released. Once package listings pick it up I’ll give it a go and report back.

I’m able to boot by switching to fbdev in xorg.conf (the way I’m reporting this now).

3.2.0-10 #17 kernel panic pid: 1, comm: init printk+0x2d/0x2f (1019.6 KiB, image/jpeg)

Robert, I tested your kernel. Unfortunately there’s little to report: here it still panics when bringing up X with -intel. Should I perhaps file a different bug about these?

I’ll attach a picture of the output. Looks like the freezing with just the mouse cursor occurs about 1/3 of boots, in 2/3 it manages to switch back to the logging terminal with the panic.