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Major Linux/Athlon CPU bug discovered

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the a-bug-a-day-keeps-alan-at-play dept.

GeorgeFrancisco writes "I recently installed the nVidia drivers so I could play TuxRacer on my Athlon. Problem is it kept inexplicably hanging Linux. Now I know why. The CPU bug affects Athlon/Duron/Athlon MP AGP users. Fortunately there's a way around it, and: "Alan [Cox] is going to try to add some kind of Athlon/AGP CPU bug detection code to the kernel so that it will be able to auto-downgrade to 4K pages when necessary." Read more on the Gentoo Linux site."

9 of 402 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is this the same as the Win2k bug? by kilrogg · · Score: 5, Funny
    RTFA, AMD released a patch for w2k but never mentioned anything to the kernel developers.

    Instead of saying "oops, there a hardware bug", they said, "oops, here' a patch for w2k". Looks like none of the kernel developers knew they had to look a w2k bug fixes to find out about hardware bugs.

  2. Well that is it! by Metrollica · · Score: 2, Funny

    Boycott AMD!!!

    --



    --Metrollica
  3. Re:For once Microsoft manged to fix it first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    The patch is a one line registry change ... open source. The linux developers could have easily incorporated it into the kernel

    I don't know why those damn Linux developers just didn't fire up good ol' /sbin/regedit and fix the Linux registry.

  4. Buggy Features by Perdo · · Score: 5, Funny

    MShaft: "Not-a-bug-it's-a-feature"

    Intel: "Not a bug it's erratum."

    VIA: "We slowed it down to keep it cool."

    Nvidia: "That was a leak! We are not doing public driver beta testing!"

    ATI "Who the hell plays Quack3?"

    AMD "the patch is here"

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  5. The guys who found the bug... by GdoL · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...seems they work for Intel. Their description was:
    "It's a major bug. We don't know how it happend. We will ask marketing. We don't remember ever sell that chip.".

    :-))

    --

    ------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
  6. What bloody bug? by DABANSHEE · · Score: 5, Funny

    None of the Athlons or Durons I've built have had any problems with Tux Racer (Mostly on Man8.1 default install).

    My nephew spends hours Sliding that little penguin arround with that bloody elevator music going, & not once has there been a freeze or lockup, much to my dissapointment.

  7. AthlonXP not affected by toofast · · Score: 2, Funny

    From AMD's website:

    Note: This patch is not needed for Windows XP

  8. Who's Responsibility? by jxqvg · · Score: 3, Funny
    Where is AMD in any way obligated to call the Kernel Developer Gods whenever they make a mistake? "Oh, Mr. Torvalds, I'm so sorry we made a mistake with our processor. Oh, Mr. Cox, please forgive us. Please don't tell RMS or ESR; we'll fix it, honest!"

    Here's the stark truth for you: 1)Money, 2)Userbase.

  9. Oops by jxqvg · · Score: 2, Funny

    Remember when Corporate Enemy #1 was singing something to the tune of, "Whenever there's a problem, you don't know who to blame?", and how The Community laughed it all off as FUD? Now you can see that whenever there's a problem, you don't necessarily know who to notify, either. Don't call it a feature one day and then curse it the next. That sounds all too much like somebody else...