[plug] "unknown bridge resource 0: assuming transparent"

[Denis Brown]

Dear PLUG list members,

Attempting to load Linux onto a 2.8GHz P4, 2.5GB RAM and SCSI HDDs.   It 
comes pre-installed with WinXP and I will blow that away of course but at 
power-on there is compelling evidence that the hardware is working -- if I 
let him, Mr Gates is keen to load and get going!   CD-ROM is IDE and the 
hardware is IBM (an Intellistation M-Pro which is spec'd okay for Linux.)

Initially tried Knoppix - mainly to learn what modules were recommended for 
the audio, video, etc.   Knoppix is great that way.   But that failed with 
messages about bridge resource conflicts, similar to above in the subject 
line.   Also threw up a problem that it could not find (a device at?) 
00:1f.1 because of resource conflicts.

Tried the Debian woody #1 (bootable) CD but it told me there were no hard 
disks to be seen and the dmesg output flew past too fast to read - hey, 
it's a 2.8G cpu after all.  Tried booting as bf24, come to think of it 
never tried the 2.2 kernel option.

Tried RH8 since IBM state that they support and have tried the hardware 
with RH7.3 and above.  That would probably have been fine but RH installer 
insisted that my CD-ROM was SCSI, despite the fact that it was clearly 
working (up to that point) as IDE.   Sigh.

Tried the Lord Sutch Debian installer mini-CD but that was the same story 
as the vanilla Debian - cannot see the SCSI hard disks.

Dropped in a temporary IDE HDD and installed a minimal Debian woody to 
that.   At least I now have a sane dmesg output and confirmation that all 
is not well there.   The SCSI controller is an Adaptec/IBM special but 
purports to use the AIC7xxx driver.   My next step would be to compile a 
kernel for this machine, and I will do so, but I was wondering a priori if 
there is something I may be overlooking in order to get it going with stock 
CDs.   I do not want to face a situation where I have to jump through hoops 
temporarily adding in hard disks, etc to get back to a workable system if I 
should have to reload things :-(   I will not include the whole dmesg 
output but here is a snippet of some grief...

Linux version 2.4.18-bf2.4 (root at zombie) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002 
(Debian prerelease)) #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f400 (usable)
  BIOS-e820: 000000000009f400 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
  BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000009fef0000 (usable)
  BIOS-e820: 000000009fef0000 - 000000009fef3000 (ACPI NVS)
  BIOS-e820: 000000009fef3000 - 000000009ff00000 (ACPI data)
  BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
Warning only 896MB will be used.
Use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel.
found SMP MP-table at 000f6120
hm, page 000f6000 reserved twice.
hm, page 000f7000 reserved twice.
hm, page 000f0000 reserved twice.
hm, page 000f1000 reserved twice.

I presume the high memory errors would disappear with an HM-enabled kernel.

Then, later on it complains about the IO-APICs...
ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
Setting 2 in the phys_id_present_map
...changing IO-APIC physical APIC ID to 2 ... ok.
init IO_APIC IRQs
  IO-APIC (apicid-pin) 2-0, 2-5, 2-10, 2-11, 2-20, 2-21, 2-22 not connected.
..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=2 pin2=0
number of MP IRQ sources: 25.
number of IO-APIC #2 registers: 24.
testing the IO APIC.......................

IO APIC #2......
.... register #00: 02000000
.......    : physical APIC id: 02
.... register #01: 00178020
.......     : max redirection entries: 0017
.......     : PRQ implemented: 1
.......     : IO APIC version: 0020
.... register #02: 00178020
.......     : arbitration: 00
  WARNING: unexpected IO-APIC, please mail
           to linux-smp at vger.kernel.org

This seems allied to the inability to see the SCSI controller - and drives 
- according to what I found on the 'net (see below.)   And finally the 
bridge resource complaints...

mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfbaa0, last bus=3
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Unknown bridge resource 0: assuming transparent
Unknown bridge resource 2: assuming transparent
Unknown bridge resource 2: assuming transparent

Mr Google has smiled upon me to the extent that there was a lot of talk 
about these problems with AIC7xxx chips / drivers in the early 2.4 kernels 
like 2.4.3 and 2.4.4.   The Debian installer CD carries 2.4.18-bf24 if the 
dmesg output is to be believed.  Does anyone have any later experience, or 
would you be recommending a 2.6 kernel?   I'm a bit wary of bleeding edge 
stuff especially as I would like to think of Linux as at least as stable as 
the nearly-vanilla Win NT4 that the user currently has on her lower-end 
machine.   I'll probably have to wind up cutting my own Linux recovery CD 
but I have a nagging feeling that I'm overlooking something Bleedingly 
Obvious (tm).

BTW the boot-time Adaptec utilities / diagnostics come up clean and can see 
the SCSI-connected drives.   BIOS has been re-flashed to the latest from 
IBM's site.   BIOS settings seem reasonable, at least to me.  :-)

TIA,
Denis