# Hardware confusion [SOLVED]

## gjy0724

Excuse my ignorance, but unfortunately I am not a hardware savvy geek.  I upgraded my system recently and have done a couple of re-installs of Gentoo to the system but seem to keep getting a IRQ handle error on shutdown/reboot of the system and the kernel panics.  I don't remember the specifics of the install error unfortunately I am dual-booting with one of the Win7 RCs and after install I noticed something I wasn't expecting.  I had downloaded both the 64bit and 32bit versions but didn't label them that specifically when I burned them.  Anyway, after the install of Win7 I noticed that I had a Program Files and a PF (x86) directory.  So, obviously I am running the 64bit which, like I said, I wasn't expecting.  My main question is would I use an x86 install CD and specify x86 architecture or do I need amd64 or ia64 install CDs and architecture settings?  And, would using the x86 settings be causing my problems?

My PC has a Intel Core 2 Duo Processor running at 3.00GHz.

I will attempt another install to see if I have better luck.  Thank you in advance.  Feel free to place in the Installation forum.Last edited by gjy0724 on Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:02 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## baeksu

If you want to run 32-bit gentoo, use the x86. If you want 64-bit gentoo, use amd64. Either should work fine, though if you have more than 4GB of RAM, you might want to opt for the 64-bit version. Do not use ia64, that's for itanium processors.

IRQ handle errors are not necessary serious by themselves, though kernel panics are not cool.  If you can, please post the kernel panic messages here and we can help figure out what's wrong.

Could be a software bug, could be some hardware problems also. Running x86 on a Core2Duo processor is not what's causing these problems, however.

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## d2_racing

Hi, can you post the actual error.

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## gjy0724

Thanks for the replys, I am currently in the process of reinstalling as I type this.  So, as long as I get the error message I will post it.  However I suspect that the error will return.  I have 2GB of memory, so to be safe I will probably opt for 32bit just to be safe.  Will post error at as soon as I can.

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## sera

You shouldn't use a x86 installation unless you have a real good reason to do so. You can't buy any x86 hardware anymore for quite a while and as a consequence there are less and less people using it. Support and testing depend on it.

Hardened, something you might want to consider in the near future will greatly benefit from using amd64 over x86.

Also multimedia applications generally profit from running on amd64.

My conclusion, unless you know exactly why you need x86, you shouldn't use it.

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## gjy0724

Okay, the error I get is as follows, and then the system completely freezes and does not panic as I first mentioned and does not reboot or shutdown.

```
Restarting system

do_IRQ: 0.43 No irq handler for vector (irq -1)

do_IRQ: 0.43 No irq handler for vector (irq -1)

... 10 times
```

Sera, as I said before, I am not a guru when it comes to hardware so I will take your advice into consideration.

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## sera

This looks a bit like both the bios and the kernel are trying to manage the IRQs. Is there a an option in the bios to turn IRQ handling off. If so you could give it a try.

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## gjy0724

I checked the BIOS concerning the management of IRQs and the only thing I found was for the 3 PCI controllers, all being set to auto.  I also get a udevd error during boot [15841] udev: missing sysfs features and it also references removing CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECIATED.  Do you think this could tie in with the problem, I am using the default kernel config at the moment.  Thank you for you further assistance.Last edited by gjy0724 on Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:36 pm; edited 2 times in total

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## NeddySeagoon

gjy0724,

What is the exact name of the stage3 talball you used for your install ?

It should have i686 in its name, not x86.

The x86 minimal CD is for all intel 32 bit CPUs (or 64 bit ones when you want a 32 bit install)

The x86 stage3 tarball is for i486 and i586 class CPUs but will work for later systems, including yours

The i686 stage 3 tarball is for PentiumPro, P2 and later CPUs.  It uses the newer instruction set found on all these systems is all.

Using it (or not) is not the cause of your error.

When you boot into your own install, look in /proc/interrupts,  you should see IO-APIC mentioned quite a lot, not PC-XT... whatever. I don't have one of them running any more to look at.  Thats a kernel configuration option.

There are also some kernel command line options related to IRQ routing and handling.  Look in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt 

They are all things you append to the kernel line in grub.conf to test but you can do that by pressing e at the splash screen and editing the in memory copy of grub.conf before you boot.

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## gjy0724

The tarball I used for the install this time was "stage3-i686-20091222.tar.bz2" but I have attempted the install with several stage3's over the past couple months with the same results.  The interrupts in /proc/interrupts read IO-APIC as they should.  Does anyone else recommend the use of amd64 over x86 on this machine.

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## NeddySeagoon

gjy0724,

With 2G of RAM, you will not see any memory handing advantages from going 64 bit.

If you do a lot of scientific work with 64 bit floating point numbers, a 64 bit install will be faster.

Did the kernel-parameters help any ?

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## gjy0724

Thanks guys,

Through a process of elimination, I was able to get the error to go away using acpi=noirq at boot.  Everything works fine now.

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