Bugzilla – Bug 291038
grub 0.97-66 makes a Mobile-AMD(Athlon) based machine unbootable (reset)
Last modified: 2007-09-14 11:50:48 UTC
After upgrading grub package 0.97-62 to 0.97-66 from openSUSE factory, a Mobile-AMD(Athlon) based computer became to be unable to boot. It seems to reboot while grub stage loading. None of grub messages (ex. "GRUB loading stage 2" etc.) appered. Downgrading grub package to 0.97-62 can avoid this problem. This is a workaround. This is the cpuinfo on that machine. user@machine:~> cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 6 model : 8 model name : Mobile AMD Athl stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 599.993 cache size : 256 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mp mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow up ts fid vid bogomips : 1201.48 clflush size : 32 user@machine:~> uname -a Linux topo 2.6.22-rc7-3-default #1 SMP 2007/07/05 15:54:09 UTC i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
see http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub
What happens on a fresh install of e.g. Alpha7 or later? If it works, this is a duplicate of the broken update, If it still does not, there might be a compiler bug lurking, as the source code did not change.
I've just tested Alpha6 and Alpha7 with new installation (both versions are newly installed), this grub problem was not reproduced and this computer booted up successfully. So I think this may be caused by a broken update as you said. Thanks.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 223773 ***