Soekris 4801, alpine 2.0.0, kernel panic
As discussed on the alpine-devel list, in this thread:
http://lists.alpinelinux.org/alpine-devel/1029.html
Booting alpine 2.0.0 on the soekris4801 with the standard (2.6.32.18-grsec) kernel leads to kernel panic.
Other kernels were tested with the following results:
“standard kernels”;
2.6.32.15-grsec (beta2): boots ok
2.6.32.16-grsec (beta3->rc3): panic
“vserver kernels”;
2.6.32.15 (beta2): boots ok
2.6.32.16 (rc3): boots ok
2.6.32.16 (final): boots ok
While researching the issue I stumbled upon a hint (sorry, I don’t have the link) that the kernel parameter “noreplace-paravirt” might help. So I tried that, and it did in fact allow the kernel to boot without the panic.
A short while later Natanael Copa had been in contact with pipacs on #grsecurity, who supplied a patch to fix the issue. I don’t know what’s in the patch, but it did work:
Natanael built an “edge” iso with the patched kernel ( http://dev.alpinelinux.org/~ncopa/alpine/alpine-edge-100827-x86.iso ) which I tested, and which boots successfully.
Thus the issue is (probably) already resolved/resolvable. This bug report is just to have the issue tracked correctly, so the patch can be included with alpine 2.0.1
The Soekris boxes are used with a serial console, so I was able to ‘grab’ the output of the boot process and save it. Attached are some of these ‘boot logs’.
A word about the environment:
Because I was testing a “large-ish” number of different kernels, I ended up using pxe/tftp to deliver the kernel/initrd to the soekris. On the CF-card, however, alpine 2.0.0 was installed. This leads to errors, because /dev/sda1 is present and does get mounted, but anything kernel- specific is “not found”. These errors are not relevant, and should be ignored.
Naming of the attached logs (not entirely consistent):
-{.<kernel-parameter(s)>}.boot
regards,
Jon Clausen
(from redmine: issue id 422, created on 2010-09-02, closed on 2010-09-03)