Kernel panic....

[Van Snyder]

I recently installed Debian 12.5 with kernel 6.5.0.0 on an antique Dell
Vostro 1700. Occasionally it crashes with

"Kernel Panic - not syncing: Can not allocate SWIOTLB buffer earlier
and can't now provide you with the DMA bounce buffer"

I saw some remarks about this from 2013 in the context of release 3.5.

Is this a problem in the kernel, or is the computer broken?

Should I revert to an earlier release?

[Henning Follmann]

Post by Van Snyder
I recently installed Debian 12.5 with kernel 6.5.0.0 on an antique Dell
Vostro 1700. Occasionally it crashes with

So you installed this kernel from where?

Stable (Debian 12/ bookworm) uses linux kernal 6.1.XXX

Post by Van Snyder
"Kernel Panic - not syncing: Can not allocate SWIOTLB buffer earlier
and can't now provide you with the DMA bounce buffer"
I saw some remarks about this from 2013 in the context of release 3.5.
Is this a problem in the kernel, or is the computer broken?
Should I revert to an earlier release?

Maybe try the official kernel?


-H

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Post by Van Snyder
I recently installed Debian 12.5 with kernel 6.5.0.0 on an antique Dell
Vostro 1700. Occasionally it crashes with
"Kernel Panic - not syncing: Can not allocate SWIOTLB buffer earlier
and can't now provide you with the DMA bounce buffer"

Hi,

As suggested, use the Debian 6.1 kernel.

This is a laptop from around 2008 if I'm reading the spec. correctly.
This is a laptop with an older Nvidia card. How did you install it?
Did you try to install the Nvidia drivers at any point? I can't
find out whether this is one of the machines that has dual chipsets
(one Intel / one Nvidia). If so, have you used the instructions
for bumblebee/primus or whatever the appropriate magic now is?

Post by Van Snyder
I saw some remarks about this from 2013 in the context of release 3.5.
Is this a problem in the kernel, or is the computer broken?
Should I revert to an earlier release?

Ideally, if you're running Debian stable, don't revert to prior versions.

Apt-get update to ensure that you're running the latest point release.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy
(***@debian.org)

[Van Snyder]

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater

Post by Van Snyder
I recently installed Debian 12.5 with kernel 6.5.0.0 on an antique Dell
Vostro 1700. Occasionally it crashes with
"Kernel Panic - not syncing: Can not allocate SWIOTLB buffer earlier
and can't now provide you with the DMA bounce buffer"

Hi,
As suggested, use the Debian 6.1 kernel.
This is a laptop from around 2008 if I'm reading the spec. correctly.
This is a laptop with an older Nvidia card. How did you install it?
Did you try to install the Nvidia drivers at any point? I can't
find out whether this is one of the machines that has dual chipsets
(one Intel / one Nvidia). If so, have you used the instructions
for bumblebee/primus or whatever the appropriate magic now is?

I tried unsuccessfully to install the NVidia 340 driver from the NVidia
drivers page. I found a SourceForge/GitHub page by MeowIce that had the
patched driver, but not for kernel 6.1, so I installed 6.5.0.0 from
backports-bookworm and the patched NVidia 340 driver. That also didn't
work, so I reinstalled bog-standard Debian 12.5 with the 6.1 kernel
using the net-install ISO from the Debian site. It doesn't have dual
graphic chipsets. The video driver is nouveau.

Post by Andrew M.A. Cater

Post by Van Snyder
I saw some remarks about this from 2013 in the context of release 3.5.
Is this a problem in the kernel, or is the computer broken?
Should I revert to an earlier release?

Ideally, if you're running Debian stable, don't revert to prior versions.
Apt-get update to ensure that you're running the latest point
release.
All the very best, as ever,
Andy