agpgart aperture check fails with kernels 2.6.22.4-65.fc7 and 2.6.22.5-71.fc7 [SOLVED]

Antti J. Huhtala ahuhtal4 at welho.com
Wed Oct 3 01:52:21 UTC 2007


to, 2007-09-06 kello 02:34 +0300, Antti J. Huhtala kirjoitti:
> Hi list,
> 
> I've just filed a bug in
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=278721
> 
> to report about agpgart aperture check failure after two recent kernel
> updates in my AMD Athlon 64 3000+ desktop box with ASUS K8N MB, Nvidia
> nForce3 chipset and ATI Radeon 9200 PRO controller.
> The problem appears in trying to restart the computer (warm boot). Then
> the booting process freezes right after 'Booting the kernel.' appears on
> screen. It won't go on from that point.
> 
> To be able to use the box at all I must perform a cold boot, i.e. power
> the system completely off. A couple of seconds off is sufficient. When
> booted after power-off, four lines of agpgart messages including 
> 
> "No usable aperture found." 
> "Consider rebooting with iommu=memaper=2 to get a good aperture."
>  
> are printed but booting continues past the 'freeze point' and eventually
> ends up in usual Gnome login screen. From then on the box runs normally.
> 
> agpgart aperture check has worked in this box through all kernels since
> FC4 in June, 2005 until 2.6.22.4-65 update on 25th Aug. apgart version
> is still the same 1.02 which has worked just fine for at least several
> months. 
> 
> A more detailed description can be read from bugzilla. If anyone on this
> list has similar experience and box components, please add your comments
> to the above bug. If someone knows a quick remedy, that's welcome, too. 
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Antti
> 
Although nobody on the list has commented my original bug report, I
consider it appropriate to announce also here that a solution was found
for my AGP aperture detection problem and my consequent inability to
warm-boot the computer since kernel 2.6.22.4-65.fc7.x86_84 update.

My desktop box (only) has 512 M of RAM. However, I have to put mem=510M
in /etc/grub.conf kernel line to facilitate both computer restart (warm
boot) and AGP aperture detection. The latter is important e.g. in using
GoogleEarth and other graphics-intensive programs (i.e. for speed).

My uneducated guess is that if no upper RAM memory limit is given, a
memory overflow will occur and newer kernels crash. I don't know why
this didn't happen until kernel 2.6.22.4-65 update came about.

I still have one minor problem: if I cold boot my box, AGP aperture is
not detected but a simple reboot rectifies that. I suspect this is a
timing problem in cold boot process but it may be just my memory chips.

Antti





More information about the fedora-list mailing list