Created attachment 4089 [details] Kernel panic with AMG Geod LX 800 - Mageia 3 KDE4 CD & DVD Kernel panic (exitcode= 0x00007f00) before 10s in Mageia 3 live KDE4 (both CD and DVD, verified with md5sum). There's a call trace with 6 lines which seems only to state there has been a kp. It's a netbook (Proview PC-81001) with an AMD Geode LX 800, a low-power 500MHz CPU with companion video hardware. There's a special Xorg driver (called "geode"), but other distros just use the generic vesa driver and it "works" (* - see ahead). Memory is 512MB with a 60GB HD, where I previously installed Mageia 2 -- which ran ok (normal operations are quick... except floating point ones). At the moment, a Debian-based small distro is installed (antiX). The Geode CPU derives from the old IBM Cyrix, and is usually considered in the 586 class, but it may lack some important feature Mageia 3 require. Feel free to close the bug if that's the case. Feel free to ask more info... I'll see what I can do. (*) The vesa driver defaults to 1024x768 (as reported by the video h/w). But on this particular netbook, screen space is 1024x600, which makes life miserable as boot options are usually put at the bottom of the screen. When boot is successful and the system is up, I still cannot see the panel/launcher/toolbar -- usually at the bottom. The geode driver must be installed via terminal, a specially tuned xorg.conf must be copied (with 1024x600 modeline). Not all distros offer 800x600 as boot resolution, but then again it seem not to work. 640x480 works and it would be nice to have that option for live versions at boot. - xorg.conf tuned to allow for reasonably smooth scroll in Chromium (some of its experimental flags also help) available if needed. On a side note, Mageia 3 boots correctly on another somewhat old PC -- IIRC a 1.6 GHz Celeron with 1GB RAM. Thanks for the good work, people. Making Mageia may be fun, and that's nice, but you make the product fun to use -- and not everyone manages to do that. That's what I find most impressive.
Just adding that "critical" relates to the kind of bug (kernel panic so early), not that I'm requesting special attention for a processor so uncommon that it is used for 2 or 3 guys Mageia users (though OLPC seems to use it, too). Besides, as a matter of fact, it's an old machine which will probably be used as file server or firewall or maybe a squid proxy. SInce it cannot play movies very well, it's not like a desktop is essential on it. Sorry if I sounded too sensasionalist when filing the bug.
I took a hint from the Mageia 3 download page alert about live versions being inadequate for upgrades (because the "live" kernel is just copied at installation). I then used a Mageia i586 DVD and things worked pretty fine -- installed a lot of packages, which by the way was undesired, as I was planning the machine to become a server (and I did uncheck most options selecting just "proxy server" or something...). My conclusion is that the live CD image cannot handle the Geode LX 800 (or its companion hardware). Since *in my case* installing from DVD is ok, I think we can leave things the way they are... I wonder if it's reasonable to expect the live CD to work, since the processor is recognized as an i586. Therefore, I shall change this bug's status to Solved (as "won't fix", for a multiplicity of reasons). As a user of Mageia 3, thanks again for the amazing work to all you folks put into Mageia. Great holiday wishes to all of you!
Status: NEW => RESOLVEDResolution: (none) => WONTFIX
I downgraded this bug from critical to normal. I thought about it and concluded I had rated it critical because at first I didn't know the live version could not provide a kernel for the Geode LX800 processor. I'm also reopening it because I think there should be a note somewhere indicating the Live CD has stricter requirements than the install-only DVD. If such note already exists please make it more visible for those who need to choose which media to download.
Status: RESOLVED => REOPENEDVersion: 3 => CauldronResolution: WONTFIX => (none)Severity: critical => normal
Summary: AMD Geode LX 800 kernel panic before 10 seconds! => Live media does not work with AMD Geode LX 800 CPU
Well, technically a live i586 media should work, but as that is a very low powered system, it probably does not have much ram either, making it more "useless" to try and boot on
CC: (none) => tmb
I thought it should work, too. Feeling it's old and considering the non-live installs without problems, I had previously closed this bug. I now have extremely low expectations: namely that a warning be present directing other users to avoid the LIVE version and go instead for the full install-only media. Of course, not every "news" fit to be printed and this bug might be warning enough if someone Googles it. If ones sees things that way and wishes to close this bug, it's ok by me... Please don't fix the live CD/DVD as it's too much work for little to no gain. As for utility, this computer was surprisingly useful: - for examining files too big (3+GB) for Windows; - command line utils (less, csplit) worked like a charm -- DOS would do but there's nothing really useful like in Linux CLI; - accelerated video allows for viewing the low resolution ones (up to 640x480, good enough in a lot of situations) - I used it as proxy and print server until recently (with Mageia 3 -- after its EOL, with a specialized Linux distro -- it works like a charm); - it has 512MB RAM,enough to run LXDE or Xfce if used as server but typically I'd use it with IceWM; - I have a small son which probably will be delighted to use with GCompris or other lightweight games in it. - it's very low-power thus it can be left on all the time; - I didn't explore things like remote desktop etc. - it's a netbook, itself somewhat lightweight... good for instance to show pics to other people or play music (the sound is abnormally good and loud). All in all, it's a great computer with still many uses. It even ran Firefox and Libreoffice; admittedly, somewhat slowly and with Flash disabled (alas, what I do in all machines I have). As server, though, these were rather infrequent uses. Of course, not the ideal machine for games... :-P But you're exactly right about the live CDs: with either KDE or Gnome, this computer would be simply unusable.
Just a clarification: I said it plays video at 480p, though I remember having used mplayer with -framedrop -nocache and other options to make it go faster. The video is watchable, but perhaps 360p would be a better option. That seems not much -- but factor in what low cost smartphones can do (approximately the same), the storage reserved for several videos on trips, real world "3G" speeds (your mileage _will_ vary) and one will conclude that such resolution is not that bad after all...
Following a similar reasoning to the one I wrote in bug 15594 , comment #6 , I think this bug is of low priority (after all, there's a workaround like I said above) and of minor severity for Mageia. Also could be easily classified as WONTFIX to let developers take care of more pressing matters. Thanks and please keep up the good work, folks.
Priority: Normal => LowSeverity: normal => minor
Changing back to Mageia 4 because I didn't test this bug in Mageia 5; maybe it was marked Cauldron when I reopened it. Or maybe I assumed the problem is still present in M5. I don't remember. But the fact of the matter is that I didn't test that in Mageia 5. I recently tested M5 in another machine with 512MB RAM (just like this one, but with a faster processor) and noticed Live CDs actually have a higher demand for memory than the installation DVD. It thrashed a lot (I had no swap available) and never managed to effectively boot, in reality. This is because Mageia 5 offers two Live CDs: one with KDE and one with Gnome. In reviews over the internet, both these two DEs are found to require more than 512MB RAM themselves. Of course, no KDE or Gnome Live distribution will be possible. Unless Mageia starts to offer a "core" Live CD -- perhaps with IceWM only (for instance), it won't be very useful to test this bug again, a fact which Thomas already pointed out in comment #4. I now think that, besides the probable lack of drivers in the Live CD for the Geode CPU, it would be advisable to update memory requirements for the Live CD in the documentation (Release Notes?).
Version: Cauldron => 4
With the Mageia 5 released and the nearing end of life for Mageia 4, this bug should be checked again. As noted on the previous comments #8 and #4, as long as Mageia offers live versions with only KDE4 and Gnome, testing this bug in a 512MB RAM machine is not going to work -- regardless of CPU support. A minimal installation (e.g. IceWM-only) is still expected to work with the classical installer, though. Another way to put it is that this machine -- though adequate for Mageia 5 -- does not meet the live versions' higher hardware requirements. In light of such considerations, I'm closing this bug as WONTFIX. Feel free to change that and add a different view of the situation. Thanks.
Status: REOPENED => RESOLVEDResolution: (none) => WONTFIX