Hi,

FYI with Peter off-list help we found a way to make the ASUS M2A-VM with
1604 BIOS stable under my stress test: we just needed nmi_watchdog=1 in
the kernel boot options (no other boot option necessary).

With nmi_watchdog=1 we see in kern.log "APIC error" but
the machine stayed stable during 3 days of stress testing:

...
Apr  7 22:41:43 gcc04 kernel: APIC error on CPU2: 00(40)
Apr  7 22:41:43 gcc04 kernel: APIC error on CPU1: 00(40)
Apr  7 22:41:43 gcc04 kernel: APIC error on CPU3: 00(40)
Apr  7 22:41:43 gcc04 kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 00(40)
Apr  7 22:53:01 gcc04 kernel: APIC error on CPU3: 40(40)
Apr  7 22:53:01 gcc04 kernel: APIC error on CPU0: 40(40)
Apr  7 22:53:01 gcc04 kernel: APIC error on CPU1: 40(40)
...

guerby@gcc04:~$ cat /proc/cmdline 
root=/dev/sda1 ro nmi_watchdog=1

We are now stress testing the 1705 BIOS version which was released by
ASUS on 20080331, with and without nmi_watchdog=1. Then we'll go
back to testing the ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi-AP with the newer 1002
BIOS also released on 20080331.

Note: for msr decoding xxd should be used since hexdump doesn't work:

xxd -s 0xc0010015 -l 8 /dev/cpu/0/msr

So people having stability problems with Phenom 9x00 with Linux should
try nmi_watchdog=1 as boot option.

Sincerely,

Laurent


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