APIC error on CPU0 ?

jedman · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2002 Posts: 9

Anyone know what this means? When I try to boot off the 1.4RC1 CD, it starts booting, but before I can type anything, I get "APIC error on CPU0" scrolling up the screen, and the box is locked up.
I have downloaded and burnt the CD twice, on different computers. My box is an MSI smp mobo, with 1 Athlon XP (MP modded) 1600+ cpu. I'm also using an ATA 133 [raid] card for the HDDs. The cd-roms are connected to the two onboard controllers. Could this be the cause? Red Hat 7.3 has been installed (with no errors) on this machine.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Jed

steveb · Advocate Joined: 18 Sep 2002 Posts: 4564

try to disable APM in the bios. and if you have any option for ACPI, then disable it as well.

cheers

steve

delta407 · Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2002 3:17 am Post subject:

jedman · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2002 Posts: 9

Man, guys, I don't know what's causing this error! I looked in the bios for APIC, and couldn't find anything to change. For the record, I always have "Plug & Play OS" off when I run a linux distro on my machine, so that wasn't it either.
Guess I'll wait until I get my second CPU in here and try again - maybe it was an SMP error? Still, it has me puzzled. Wonder if it could be that RAID card as well?
Ah...I'd like to try Gentoo, as the gurus say it's faster than anything else available!
Jed

Curious · Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2002 4:31 am Post subject:

Sorry to bomb in late, but have you tried passing the option 'noapic=1' to the kernel? I can't remember if you can pass kernel options on the boot cd... anyone with The Knowledge prepared to weigh in?

Might help with your problems. I used to disable the APIC on my SMP box because it caused me terrible stability problems.

-- Curious.
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jedman · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2002 Posts: 9

That would be cool to try - but how can I do that? I mean, it gives me the APIC error scrolling up the screen before it allows me to type anything.
Ideas?

Jed

jedman · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2002 Posts: 9

I just found out that it is definatly related to this box only - I mean, my CD is good, because it will work on my old Pentium Pro server box. So . . . anyone know how to disable this APIC thing? It seems to be a problem with SMP.
Thanks for any input here,
Jed

silvercat · n00b Joined: 07 Aug 2002 Posts: 54 Location: Canada

I have a motherboard... it is the Abit BP6 SMP... i also have APIC errors with both CPU's as i can see in the logs... usually it's pretty stable... when i was running RedHat... what would happen... occasionally... is the hard drive led would come on when doing heavy disk activity... and it would just stay lit... and then eventually... (it didn't take long)... the system would lock up..

I just installed Gentoo 1.4rc1 on this system... and i haven't had ne major problems so far... i added the kernel boot parameter "noapic"... but i still noticed an APIC error on one CPU... on bootup..

I think that this motherboard that i'm using has a little stability bug... or so i have been reading..

So i'm still getting APIC errors on both cpu's... but it doesn't seem to be harming the stability of the system so far... i still think it's a bug with the motherboard..

Curious · Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2002 11:27 pm Post subject:

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

Last time I looked, the default boot option on the 1.4rc1 LiveCD did include the noapic parameter.

meyerm · Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 8:28 pm Post subject:

I think, you can't disable APIC in SMP systems. The reason is that at least "somthing" must assign the interrupts to one CPU or the other. They don't know of each others jobs, therefore another single component must administrate the IRQs.

rac · Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 8:49 pm Post subject:

jedman, do you still have RedHat running? If so, you can bypass the entire install CD kernel business and gestate Gentoo inside your RedHat, as is described in the alternate install guide. That way, you can always use a kernel that you make that works for you.

Strange as it may seem, for people who seem to have lots of trouble with the install CD (and the 1.2 one doesn't work for them either), I think it's a reasonable approach to put in some easy-to-install distro just long enough to install Gentoo.
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jedman · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2002 Posts: 9

Well, shoot. I don't have Red Hat running anymore, because I tried the latest bios update on MSI's website, and it screwed the mobo! (I'm trying to figure this out right now). Neither WinXP or Red Hat 7.3 will boot now, and when I go into the bios, I can't change anything - when I hit enter on the highlighted option, I just get a blank dialog box, (with no options to change), and the machine locks up on me. Arrrgh!

Interesting side note; before I tried the bios update, I tried the old 1.2 install CD . . . and it did not give me the APIC error. (I didn't want to install it, however, because it is old, and I'd have to do a serious update!) What can this mean?

Jed

rac · Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 9:59 pm Post subject:

jedman · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2002 Posts: 9

Wow, that's cool! Let me make sure I understand correctly:
You mean I can just boot with the 1.2 CD, then follow the install guide that I printed off for 1.4_rc1?

Jed

rac · Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2002 1:14 am Post subject:

pilla · Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2002 1:37 am Post subject:

As far as I remember, you cannot disable APIC in SMP systems, but you should disable APM (why? Don't remember -- don't blame me, I'm getting too old).