Problem with kexec on i386, linux-3.5

[Christian Schaubschläger]

Hello list,

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this; if it's not, I'd like to apologize.

Here's a short description of my problem:

I have a tiny protected-/real mode program, which I start using kexec (kexec-tools 2.0.3 released 05 April 2012). At some point this program makes a call to extended-int13 to read data from the disk. Now starting with linux-3.5-rc1 (and at least up to linux-3.5) this extended int13 call does not work any more. Apparently the call returns with error code 0x80, which means "timeout (not ready)".

I have two machines here, both with Intel chipsets (one CougarPoint, one older ICH7-M), and I see the same behaviour on both machines.

When I use older kernels (starting from 2.6.something up to 3.4.6), everything works fine.

Now I'm not sure if this is a kernel issue, or a kexec issue, or a mistake by myself. Maybe someone has a hint for me...

If required, of course, I can provide more detailed information about my hardware, kernel config, etc. (since I'm not sure if this is the correct place, I wanted to keep this message short for now).

Thank you
Christian Schaubschlaeger