Re: can't boot kernel 4.x on SX164

On 20.02.2016 08:41, Michael Cree wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 12:09:49AM -0500, Alex Winbow wrote:
>> 	I'm unable to boot kernel 4.2 or 4.4 on SX164. aboot loads the kernel and
>> the initrd successfully, then returns to the SRM prompt -- no error
>> messages. (I'm using kernel 3.16 at present.)
>>
>> 	Are there any known issues with Linux 4.x over 3.x on alpha, or on
>> SX164/EB164 in particular?
> 
> Yes, I have seen the same thing with the Debian 4.3 generic kernel.
> But a self-built 4.3 kernel boots fine.

It might be related, but on parisc I'm seeing the same problem that
kernels above 4.3 crash and won't boot. There have been a few reports
about it, e.g.  https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-parisc/msg06624.html

I'm trying to debug it, but like as for Michael the debian kernel crashes, 
while my self-built 4.3 kernel boots fine. It seems to be related if drivers
are built-in or loaded as modules during bootup.

One assumption I have is that it mainly affects parisc and alpha, because those
two arches don't have ARCH_HAS_SG_CHAIN defined. I stumbled over commit
10c95ed9aa2970e05fedb4ac8b3ce1b934dab17b (which seems fine in general)
[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=10c95ed9aa2970e05fedb4ac8b3ce1b934dab17b]
but maybe the crypto modules and the scsi libs are involved here and the
scatterlist changes lead to memory corruption somewhere. 

Helge