Some PCI devices do not handle kexec reboot nicely

We found in testing that certain PCI devices don't handle
the
kexec'ed kernel reboot gracefully on IA64 Altix. Some GbE
card
would get into a bad state permanently after one reboot, and
resulted in MCA on the machines when booting kexec'ed kernel
thereafter. The MCA was a result of a PIO read to the
Expansion
ROM of the card.  We also saw a USB card issuing stale DMA's
which was queued up prior to the kexec reboot.

Do you observe similar problems on other platforms? Are the
drivers
supposed to reset the cards when it re-attach to the card on
the kexec reboot?

Thanks,
 - jay

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On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 04:18:12PM -0800, Jay Lan wrote:
> We found in testing that certain PCI devices don't
handle the
> kexec'ed kernel reboot gracefully on IA64 Altix. Some
GbE card
> would get into a bad state permanently after one
reboot, and
> resulted in MCA on the machines when booting kexec'ed
kernel
> thereafter. The MCA was a result of a PIO read to the
Expansion
> ROM of the card.  We also saw a USB card issuing stale
DMA's
> which was queued up prior to the kexec reboot.
> 
> Do you observe similar problems on other platforms? Are
the drivers
> supposed to reset the cards when it re-attach to the
card on
> the kexec reboot?

I think that the simple answer to that is yes.
However isn't it the case that this simply isn't possible
for some
hardware? There was talk of passing a boot parameter to the
second
kernel so it knew it was a second kernel and drivers could
take
evasive action as needed. I'm not sure what happened to that
idea.

-- 
Horms
  H: http://www.vergenet.n
et/~horms/
  W: http://www.valinux.co.jp
/en/

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