2.6.38-11-generic re-introduced old bug on Gateway FX6850-51u

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 7:04 PM, Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 11:36:07AM -0700, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
>> Actually, thinking about it, it may also be switching between grub-pc
>> and grub-efi.  Originally, Ubuntu 11.04 installer put grub-efi on the
>> system.  On next kernel update (where halting/rebooting problem was
>> fixed), updater replaced grub-efi with grub-pc.
>
> This *really* shouldn't happen and is a bug that needs to be addressed,
> regardless of any of the other stuff here.  The logs in /var/log/apt/
> and possibly /var/log/dist-upgrade/ may help to figure out why the
> package management system felt it needed to do this.

These logs probably rotated some time ago on my system.  If updater
attempts to replace grub-efi with grub-pc on next kernel update, I'll
check them out and report.  Alternatively, Brian can check out logs on
his system, since it seems updater on his system is still trying to
force him into replacing grub-efi with grub-pc.

>> I'm not sure how and why would choice of boot loader (grub-pc vs.
>> grub-efi) affect shutting down the system, but it looks like it does
>> in some odd way!?
>
> Booting in a completely different firmware mode, which is the effect of
> switching between grub-pc (BIOS) and grub-efi (UEFI), could easily make
> a difference here.

Makes sense.  I managed to find a screenshot with kernel trace from
some time ago (this was likely 2.6.38-8, or whatever was the current
Ubuntu kernel on 2011-05-23 (the date on the file).  The call trace
shows few EFI-related (based on the name) functions being executed at
the time system crashed during either shutdown or reboot.  I uploaded
the screen shot here (if text looks unreadable, use Picasa's controlls
to zoom in): https://picasaweb.google.com/105136527709185448712/MiscAttachments?authkey=Gv1sRgCKiehIiMnpn_qwE#5643908739416731554