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I recently changed a bunch of hardware, including the motherboard, and have now started playing musical boot parameters. LiveCD-1 "works" with this kernel and set of boot parameters, LiveCD-2 doesn't. An install to hard disk needs another set of boot parameters. That sort of thing.
What I've been looking for, is some document which explains boot parameters for recent kernels. What boot parameters are necessary, which ones work to get things up so you can work on them, how to change them to make things work better. I'm guessing such a document doesn't exist. Is it even possible to write such a document? How would one do this?
For example, I assume irqpoll is about the biggest hammer one can pull with irq problems. It would be better if a person used irqfixup or routeirq, and best if no boot parameter involving irq was needed.
In the latter (say from 2.6.18 to 2.6.21) kernels, it seems that work involving the (possible) need for things like nomsi and acpi=off is happening. As I understand PCI and PCI-Express, you really don't want either nomsi or acpi=off.
Thanks.
They are documented
In the file Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt, shipped with the latest stable kernel tarball from kernel.org. You can also find older copies online.
The reason you have to use so many parameters is that the kernels you are using are too "generic". If you learn to build your own kernel (it involves checking many boxes in "make menuconfig", then running "make modules_install install"), you can make less generic decisions that are better suited to your hardware and intended use and will not need to override all the poor decisions someone else made when they constructed a "one size fits all" kernel.