Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-kernel (148 mails)

[Rob OpenSuSE <rob.opensuse.linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dell Inspiron 531 which is an AMD 64 X2 5,600+ 2.8Hz box.  It was
certifed for SLE with Dell's 1.03 BIOS.
The box is dual booted with Vista, for applications that are poorly
supported under Linux so generally was following Dell recommendations
on driver & firmware updates.

In late November 2007, Dell were pushing an "urgent" BIOS upgrade
1.08, but the ACPI was compiled by M$ tool and 10.3's kernel couldn't
see 2nd CPU, nor power off the machine on halt.  Downgrading the BIOS
bricked the mobo, when Vista glitched during the Flash process, and
then actually forced a shutdown claiming piracy on an attempt to flash
again!  The M$ ACPI code was according to the word on the net,
non-standard so it would seem to be a problem for Dell, as they'd had
the machine certified for SLE.

Dell replaced the mobo, sending an engineer.  Trying the 1.12 BIOS,
the ACPI issues are still present.  But, the 2.6.27 11.1 kernel, does
see both CPUs, power off, and have CPUFREQ stuff working to, and when
looking into a bug report, I've been advised to be using the latest
BIOS version.  In long run, I want to migrate to 11.1 and it seems to
be working.  So it appears that the kernel has been enhanced or had a
bug fix, to cope with these BIOS features.  I haven't been following
kernel changes closely enough to be sure the BIOS update works due to
enhancements, rather than "luck".

Could someone advise me, if I should be raising an issue with Dell, or
if it makes more sense to move the kernel used by 10.3, to 2.6.27 (or
2.6.25?) as an interim solution?
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