From: Mikael Pettersson Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:19:56 +0000 (+0200) Subject: x86, 32-bit: fix boot failure on TSC-less processors X-Git-Tag: v2.6.26-rc7~8^2~2 X-Git-Url: http://ftp.safe.ca/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=df17b1d990fc214f033c5588e58216ec941591e0;hp=df17b1d990fc214f033c5588e58216ec941591e0;p=safe%2Fjmp%2Flinux-2.6 x86, 32-bit: fix boot failure on TSC-less processors Booting 2.6.26-rc6 on my 486 DX/4 fails with a "BUG: Int 6" (invalid opcode) and a kernel halt immediately after the kernel has been uncompressed. The BUG shows EIP pointing to an rdtsc instruction in native_read_tsc(), invoked from native_sched_clock(). (This error occurs so early that not even the serial console can capture it.) A bisection showed that this bug first occurs in 2.6.26-rc3-git7, via commit 9ccc906c97e34fd91dc6aaf5b69b52d824386910: >x86: distangle user disabled TSC from unstable > >tsc_enabled is set to 0 from the command line switch "notsc" and from >the mark_tsc_unstable code. Seperate those functionalities and replace >tsc_enable with tsc_disable. This makes also the native_sched_clock() >decision when to use TSC understandable. > >Preparatory patch to solve the sched_clock() issue on 32 bit. > >Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner The core reason for this bug is that native_sched_clock() gets called before tsc_init(). Before the commit above, tsc_32.c used a "tsc_enabled" variable which defaulted to 0 == disabled, and which only got enabled late in tsc_init(). Thus early calls to native_sched_clock() would skip the TSC and use jiffies instead. After the commit above, tsc_32.c uses a "tsc_disabled" variable which defaults to 0, meaning that the TSC is Ok to use. Early calls to native_sched_clock() now erroneously try to use the TSC on !cpu_has_tsc processors, leading to invalid opcode exceptions. My proposed fix is to initialise tsc_disabled to a "soft disabled" state distinct from the hard disabled state set up by the "notsc" kernel option. This fixes the native_sched_clock() problem. It also allows tsc_init() to be simplified: instead of setting tsc_disabled = 1 on every error return, we just set tsc_disabled = 0 once when all checks have succeeded. I've verified that this lets my 486 boot again. I've also verified that a Core2 machine still uses the TSC as clocksource after the patch. Signed-off-by: Mikael Pettersson Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar ---