Occasionally kernel panics during boot since 3.3.x with Sandy Bridge

Question

Since kernel 3.3.x there are frequent kernel panics during the boot process. It seems to be a kernel problem since I downgraded to 3.0 and the problems are gone.

The kernel panics happen almost at every boot attempt. After 4 or 5 restarts the system boots normally. It also seems to affect only Sandy Bridge systems, and maybe Ivy Bridge too.

Last kernel I checked was 3.4.9 with the same results.

Answer 1

So it seems to be TLP causing the issues, in detail the part where radio devices are turned off during the boot sequence.

I changed this line

DEVICES_TO_DISABLE_ON_STARTUP="bluetooth wwan"

to

DEVICES_TO_DISABLE_ON_STARTUP=""

until now all boot attemps ran successfully. There is a new version of TLP out (0.3.7) and it addresses a similar problem. Maybe this fixes the problems. For now I'm happy finding the cause and I'll mark this as resolved.