ICH5 irq fails in 100% native mode

ICH5 irq fails in 100% native mode

[Con Kolivas]

While recently setting up a new machine with 2.6.3 and then 2.6.7-rc2 I
discovered this over and over again causing system stalls:

disabling IRQ18

syslog showed:

Jun  2 00:31:28 localhost kernel: irq 18: nobody cared!
Jun  2 00:31:28 localhost kernel:  [__report_bad_irq+42/121] 
[note_interrupt+145/175]  [do_IRQ+279/321]  [common_interrupt+24/32] 
[__do_softirq+66/177]
[do_softirq+45/47]  [do_IRQ+286/321]  [common_interrupt+24/32] 
[default_idle+0/44]  [default_idle+41/44]  [cpu_idle+46/60] 
[start_kernel+407/467]  [unkno
wn_bootoption+0/294]

dmesg revealed this:
ICH5: 100%% native mode on irq 18

Adding "noapic" to boot options simply moved the error to IRQ5 and occurred
routinely during boot at the ICH5 definition.


A quick google revealed the IDE settings in BIOS might be related so I disabled
the "ENHANCED" option for the ide controller which is both P-ATA and S-ATA and
chose the "COMPATIBLE" option.

The error went away, and now dmesg shows this:

ICH5: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later


While I am not able to determine whether there is any performance penalty for
this it seems that the probing of irqs at this point is responsible.

The hardware is an ASUS P4P800S motherboard with i848 chipset + ICH5 and a 2.8C
P4HT.

While this is a workaround I wonder what I/we need to do to make it work in
native mode.

Advice?

Con

Re: ICH5 irq fails in 100% native mode

[Jeff Garzik]

Con Kolivas wrote:
> 
> While recently setting up a new machine with 2.6.3 and then 2.6.7-rc2 I
> discovered this over and over again causing system stalls:
> 
> disabling IRQ18
> 
> syslog showed:
> 
> Jun  2 00:31:28 localhost kernel: irq 18: nobody cared!
> Jun  2 00:31:28 localhost kernel:  [__report_bad_irq+42/121] 
> [note_interrupt+145/175]  [do_IRQ+279/321]  [common_interrupt+24/32] 
> [__do_softirq+66/177]
> [do_softirq+45/47]  [do_IRQ+286/321]  [common_interrupt+24/32] 
> [default_idle+0/44]  [default_idle+41/44]  [cpu_idle+46/60] 
> [start_kernel+407/467]  [unkno
> wn_bootoption+0/294]
> 
> dmesg revealed this:
> ICH5: 100%% native mode on irq 18
> 
> Adding "noapic" to boot options simply moved the error to IRQ5 and occurred
> routinely during boot at the ICH5 definition.
> 
> 
> A quick google revealed the IDE settings in BIOS might be related so I disabled
> the "ENHANCED" option for the ide controller which is both P-ATA and S-ATA and
> chose the "COMPATIBLE" option.
> 
> The error went away, and now dmesg shows this:
> 
> ICH5: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later
> 
> 
> While I am not able to determine whether there is any performance penalty for
> this it seems that the probing of irqs at this point is responsible.
> 
> The hardware is an ASUS P4P800S motherboard with i848 chipset + ICH5 and a 2.8C
> P4HT.
> 
> While this is a workaround I wonder what I/we need to do to make it work in
> native mode.

what was your driver setup?

Ideally, there should be two PCI devices ("combined mode" disabled), one 
for PATA and one for SATA.  The PATA interface should be configured in 
legacy mode, and the SATA interface in native mode.

That seems to be the most stable configuration.

(that also presumes you use the IDE driver for PATA and libata for SATA)

	Jeff