ACPI Error: Field [CDW3] at 96 exceeds Buffer

Question

I've just installed on an old HP ML310 G5 box Fedora 25 Server edition from the current ISO. It boots with the installation kernel - 4.8.6-300. I see in dmesg the errors below, but still it boots.

[    0.033000] smpboot: CPU0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU            3065  @ 2.33GHz (family: 0x6, model: 0xf, stepping: 0xb)
[    0.033000] Performance Events: PEBS fmt0+, Core2 events, Broken BIOS detected, complain to your hardware vendor.
[    0.033000] [Firmware Bug]: the BIOS has corrupted hw-PMU resources (MSR 186 is 43003c)
[    0.033000] Intel PMU driver.
...
[    0.678420] ACPI: Thermal Zone [THM0] (8 C)
[    0.678473] ERST: Failed to get Error Log Address Range.
[    0.678578] GHES: APEI firmware first mode is enabled by WHEA _OSC.
...
[    7.356291] iTCO_wdt: Found a ICH9R TCO device (Version=2, TCOBASE=0x0960)
[    7.356313] watchdog: iTCO_wdt: cannot register miscdev on minor=130 (err=-16).
[    7.356453] watchdog: iTCO_wdt: a legacy watchdog module is probably present.
[    7.356823] iTCO_wdt: initialized. heartbeat=30 sec (nowayout=0)
...
[   12.411314] audit: type=1305 audit(1492254455.147:78): audit_pid=800 old=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj=system_u:system_r:auditd_t:s0 res=1
[   12.804386] Raw EDID:
[   12.804433]      00 00 00 00 00 00 3f ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.804519]      ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.804613]      ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.804718]      ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.804803]      ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.804888]      ff ff ff 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   12.804973]      00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   12.805065]      00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   12.833820] EDID block is all zeroes
[   12.862313] EDID block is all zeroes
[   12.890773] Raw EDID:
[   12.890817]      00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   12.890902]      00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   12.890987]      00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   12.891081]      00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[   12.891166]      00 00 00 00 00 7f ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.891263]      ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.891364]      ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.891449]      ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
[   12.891538] radeon 0000:01:02.0: VGA-1: EDID block 0 invalid.

after I did dnf makecache; dnf update and switched from kernel - 4.8.6-300 to 4.10.9-200 the server fails to boot... I can't get logs, because I can't login get to an interactive prompt.. the only messages I see on the screen are:

[Firmware bug]: The BIOS has corrupted hw-PMU resources (MSR 186 is 43003c)
ACPI Error: Field [CDW3] at 96 exceeds Buffer [NULL] size 64 (bits) (20160930/dsopcode-236)
ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\_SB._OSC] (Node ffffa38274baf50), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT (20160930/psparse-543)
NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 23s! [swapper/01]

I found some information regarding the hw-PMU resources, but from what i understand from the HP & RHEL articles, this not the main problem. Also this is my feeling, since I can boot with this error and the 4.8 kernel... I still can't find any useful information regarding the ACPI Error and NMI Watchdog errors.

Any ideas how to fix this one? I hope I can workaround the problem with BIOS change or kernel parameter while booted with the 4.8 kernel...

Answer 1

From bugzilla

HP's \SB._OSC method violates the ACPI spec. \SB._OSC is documented as taking an 8-byte argument, while the HP firmware is attempting to interpret it as a 12-byte one. HP have ignored the spec for this method and implemented their own as part of the Processor Clocking Control specification. We can't work around this without risking breaking spec-compliant machines. Nothing will actually be broken as a result of this error.