[OpenIndiana-discuss] Unbootable hipster upgrade with Nvidia USB investigation

[Gary Mills]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 10:53:44AM -0500, Gary Mills wrote:
> The symptoms I've related before.  A hipster upgrade or a recent DVD
> image fails to boot.  At the same time, my USB keyboard and mouse stop
> working.  I've filed this bug report:
> 
>     https://www.illumos.org/issues/8684
> 
[...]
> Articles that I've read say that Linux had the same problem with the
> same USB controller.  The recommended solution is to add this boot
> option:
> 
>     acpi_use_timer_override=1
> 
> On Linux, the immediate cause is HPET (high precision event timer)
> support in the kernel.  Apparently, some BIOS versions contained an
> incorrect HPET table.  The result was that interrupts appeared on the
> wrong line on the motherboard.  This table error was corrected in
> later BIOS versions.  Then, that boot option is no longer required.
> 
> What's significant here is that a timer error can affect the USB
> controller.  The same thing could happen in illumos, even though the
> kernels are quite different.

I found a workaround that enabled me to boot and run the hipster BE
that I upgraded last month.  The BIOS of this system contained an item
called `HPET Support'.  It was enabled.  I disabled it.  After that
change, the SOF error messages did not appear.  The the USB keyboard
and USB mouse worked normally.

[...]
> I suppose I should dump the HPET table, just to see what it contains.

There was nothing obviously wrong in this table.

> My next adventure will be to rig up a serial console, and use that to
> collect more debugging information.

The serial console also did not yield any useful information.

However, disabling HPET support in the BIOS did yield information.
The situation is very similar to that with Linux.  The kernel
apparently initialized the HPET device incorrectly, resulting in no
interrupts from the USB controller.  That's why the kernel disabled
the USB controller.

-- 
-Gary Mills-		-refurb-		-Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-