[Debootloaders-silo] Bug#589891: silo: No more boots on UltraSparc 10: "Fast Data Access MMU Miss"

[Jurij Smakov]

severity 589891 important
thanks

I don't think that 'grave' is really appropriate here. The latest 
version of SILO has been out for quite some time, and this is a first 
report of that kind, which makes me think that this is not a common 
scenario.

The only major change in SILO since the stable version is the switch 
from gcc-2.95 to the default gcc (4.3). The rest of the changes should 
be pretty benign, mostly related to the changes in libc headers which 
were breaking the ability to build SILO from source. Next week I'll 
try to prepare a few versions for you to test, the one built with the 
old compiler, and with various suspicious patches backed out.

In the meantime, please test whether you can reproduce the problem 
with 1.4.14+git20100207-1 - this will narrow the field somewhat.

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 01:02:46AM +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> Package: silo
> Version: 1.4.14+git20100228-1
> Severity: grave
> 
> After quite some downtime (280 days or so) I updated my UltraSparc 10
> running Sid. With that update came also a new silo (skipping one or two
> package versions inbetween).
> 
> Since that upgrade silo doesn't start anymore. On boot I just get the
> error message "Fast Data Access MMU Miss" even before the silo version
> number is shown.
> 
> The version which was installed before is 1.4.13a+git20070930-3 which is
> also the version currently in Debian Stable. After downgrading to it,
> the box boots fine again.
> 
> Both times, I tried the silo installation (i.e. calling silo on the
> command line) while running under 2.6.24 from the
> Lenny-while-being-testing installer CD I used to setup this box three
> years ago or so, so it shouldn't be that bug again with 32 vs 64 bit
> image which happened under some kernels around 2.6.30 or so.
> 
> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: squeeze/sid
>   APT prefers unstable
>   APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (400, 'stable'), (110, 'experimental')
> Architecture: sparc (sparc64)
> 
> Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-sparc64
> Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
> Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
> 
> Versions of packages silo depends on:
> ii  libc6                         2.11.2-2   Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
> 
> silo recommends no packages.
> 
> silo suggests no packages.
> 
> -- Configuration Files:
> /etc/silo.conf changed:
> root=/dev/mapper/vg0-root
> partition=1
> default=Linux
> read-only
> timeout=100
> append="video=atyfb:off"
> image=/vmlinuz
> 	label=Linux
> 	initrd=/initrd.img
> image=/vmlinuz.old
> 	label=LinuxOLD
> 	initrd=/initrd.img.old
> image=/vmlinuz-2.6.30-1-sparc64
> 	label=2.6.30-1
> 	initrd=/initrd-2.6.30-1-sparc64.img
> image=/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-sparc64
> 	label=2.6.32-5
> 	initrd=/initrd-2.6.32-5-sparc64.img
> 
> 
> -- no debconf information
> 
> -- debsums errors found:
> debsums: changed file /boot/second.b (from silo package)
> 
> 

-- 
Jurij Smakov                                           jurij at wooyd.org
Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/                      KeyID: C99E03CC