[gentoo-dev] Don't use Athlon/Duron/K7 kernels!

[gentoo-dev] Don't use Athlon/Duron/K7 kernels!

[Daniel Robbins]

Hi All,

I just found out an important tidbit of information that was absolutely
essential that I pass on.  Basically, as of right now, you should *not*
use the "Athlon/Duron/K7" processor type option when compiling a kernel
under Gentoo Linux.

Why?  Because right now, our compiler toolchain (gcc/binutils) has some
K7-related instruction bugs and will give you a flaky kernel.  This has
been confirmed through experience.  With K7 enabled, my nvidia driver
couldn't initialize the DMA push buffer it needed to do AGP.  With
a "Pentium Pro" kernel, all was well.

The moral of the story?  If you have an Athlon or Duron, choose a 
processor type of "Pentium Pro" when compiling a kernel for your system.
You'll get a high-performing and stable kernel.  When we upgrade our
toolchain (soon), this problem will go away.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@gentoo.org>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.

[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-user] Don't use Athlon/Duron/K7 kernels!

[Daniel Robbins]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 08:48:14PM +0000, Tod M. Neidt wrote:
> Ahhh!
> 
> I have been bangin my head against the wall trying to figure out what
> was going on.  I didn't encounter any major problems, but whenever I
> would logout out of gnome my console fonts would be all garbled. ( I
> didn't have this problem on my PII at work, only the Athlon at home) 
> Recompiling the kernel as PPro fixes the problem.  I was looking in the
> wrong places for this one.

Can you test something for me?  I have a new binutils-2.11.90.0.31 ebuild ready
for testing.  I used it here and recompiled my kernel with "Athlon/Duron/K7"
set and nvidia along with nvagp worked fine.  Here's what I'd like you to try.

emerge =sys-devel/binutils-2.11.90.0.31
cd /usr/src/linux
cp .config /tmp
make clean
cp /tmp/.config .
(configure kernel for Athlon/Duron/K7)
make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install
(install kernel for booting)
(reboot)
(remerge media-gfx/nvidia if you are using the nvidia driver)
start GNOME

..And then see if you *still* have those problems.  It's possible that the new
binutils resolves them.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@gentoo.org>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.