Comment 88 for bug 285392

I have come across this, and it prevents my system from booting altogether, in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 (x86_64)

My System is as follows:
Motherboard = GA-MA770-DS3 rev 1.0
CPU = Athlon X2 3800+

HDD Configuration:
Root is mounted on the IDE drive
/home is mounted on a RAID 5 array (5x 500GB)spanning across the 4 SATA ports on board, plus 1 of the 2 ports on a Silicon Image SATA expansion card.

I found the bug when preparing to install a new CPU into the system - I upgraded the bios from F2 to F7.

Up until installing BIOS F7, my system was running flawlessly, only rebooting when there was a kernel update pushed through the Ubuntu updates.

I am now systematically booting all the BIOSs.
F7 = Error as seen in thread, plus may (different) kernel panics - I have photos of some of them.
F6 = softreset error but boots normally
F5 = softreset error but boots normally
F4 = <not tested>
F3 = <not tested>
F2 = softreset error but boots normally

I have tested firmware F7 using the following settings in BIOS:
  * Native IDE
  * Legacy IDE
  * SATA -> AHCI

I have also tried with kernel parameter all_generic_ide but has also refused to boot (although in this case there are different kernel panics)

When testing with BIOS F7, I have tried booting with various old kernels, without success:
  * 2.6.28-13-generic
  * 2.6.28-11-generic
  * 2.6.24-22-generic
  * 2.6.22-14-generic

I have tried booting from the following Live CDs
  * Fedora 11 i686, both with and without all_generic_ide
  * Fedora 11 x86_64, both with and without all_generic_ide

Unfortunately, until I can find a successful workaround, I cannot install my new precessor, as only the F7 bios supports it :(

I have various photos of the stack traces and errors, but I wasn't too vigilent in noting down exactly what I tried for each photo.

Regressing back to BIOS F2 from F7 fixes the problem. Load BIOS F7 exhibits the problem again - this seems quite repeatable.

Hope this helps.
Damien.