NVM checksum inst valid and other messages when system is starting

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ericardo15

NVM checksum inst valid and other messages when system is starting

Post by ericardo15 »

Hey

recently ive installed the 4.15.18 kernel. Everything is working in the system, however, when I turn on the computer, the following messages appear before the system is ready:

-> ACPI errors
-> NVM checksum is not valid

Image Link with size: https://i.imgur.com/uLCWI3z.jpg

then the system starts and everything looks ok

Can you explain me what is this and what can I do to fix them?

thank you :wink:
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
rene
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Re: NVM checksum inst valid and other messages when system is starting

Post by rene »

The ACPI errors you can generally ignore; it's your BIOS' ACPI tables and the kernel's parser of them not agreeing on proper format and is fairly common, what with Windows' ACPI implementation rather than any paper standard being leading. That said, are you saying you see them only with the 4.15 kernel and not with the supported 4.10 or 4.13 kernels? If so, I guess this would be considered a Linux regression.

In any case, make sure you have the newest BIOS flashed so as to possibly fix things BIOS-side, but something you can try kernel-side is booting with the "acpi_osi" kernel parameter so as to change what the kernel claims to be/support. You'd first of all try "acpi_osi=Linux", second "acpi_osi=" (i.e., empty). If no change we'd need to dig around your system to find your BIOS' supported Windows strings. To set a kernel parameter you can edit the kernel command line in Grub for a one-off method or edit /etc/default/grub, add it to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT string and run sudo update-grub. Remove and rerun sudo update-grub to undo if not helpful.

Your second issue can also be ignored, assuming your NIC works fine. I do suppose that one will also have been present with previous kernels? The NIC's (N)on-(V)olatile (M)emory is where the MAC address and other bits of configuration are stored; the error message means that something at some point updated it without also properly updating the checksum: generally (or for example) a single byte of an area such as the NVM is reserved as a checksum byte and should be set so that the entire area sums to 0 mod 256. That's quite specific to the exact type of NIC though and preferably not something you'd try to fix manually. I'd either ignore it or try and find a NIC-specific tool directly from the vendor (Intel) to read from/write to the NVM.

On Linux, ethtool may be capable and here's someone using it to that effect: https://superuser.com/questions/1104537 ... thernet-co. That is, youi'd read some value and simply write it back again in hopes of this restoring a correct checksum. But as said, I'd try with a specific vendor tool first, if at all.
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