Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Joshua Kwan]

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Hi,

I'm currently working on 2.6.7 packages for Debian. Works fine, more or
less, but I'm having a weird problem with serial console. Seems to be
clobbering every second character in the output, for example:

eh:HPYMA PICerO 010ae tent 8:0:0:d:3:7

is

eth0: HAPPY MEAL (PCI/CheerIO) 10/100BaseT Ethernet 08:00:20:8d:23:77

when I look at it in dmesg.

All userspace output to the serial console appears correctly. Note, this
is not booting with 'console=ttySx'; this is just using the built-in
keyboardless/monitorless behavior of SPARC machines.

Is there some obscure setting in the PROM that can be set to fix this?
I don't think I experience this in 2.4.26 (don't feel like booting it
right now but will do so on request.)

Thanks

-- 
Joshua Kwan

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RE: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Jurzitza, Dieter]

Hi Joshua,
just for ensuring: I was working with the serial console on 2.4.26 without any problems on my U60 / SMP when I was debugging the bootloader issue with Ben Collins.
Thus, your assumption regarding the 2.4.26 should be perfectly right (at least for my machine).
You do not have to test the serial console on 2.4.26.
Take care



Dieter Jurzitza


-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Kwan [mailto:joshk@triplehelix.org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 8:47 AM
To: sparclinux@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7


Hi,

I'm currently working on 2.6.7 packages for Debian. Works fine, more or
****


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Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Joshua Kwan]

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On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 11:47:05PM -0700, Joshua Kwan wrote:
> eh:HPYMA PICerO 010ae tent 8:0:0:d:3:7

Something else seems to be up. I tried to halt, saw it hanging, opened
another SSH session and decided to strace:

open("/dev/ttyS0", O_WRONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE

It seems to be stuck there indefinitely. lsof /dev/ttyS0 returns
nothing. Same for fuser -a /dev/ttyS0.

The plot thickens...

-- 
Joshua Kwan

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Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Meelis Roos]

JK> eh:HPYMA PICerO 010ae tent 8:0:0:d:3:7

So the same symptoms that I saw were not PC serial problems afterall...

-- 
Meelis Roos

Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Joshua Kwan]

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On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 07:06:12PM +0300, Meelis Roos wrote:
> JK> eh:HPYMA PICerO 010ae tent 8:0:0:d:3:7
> 
> So the same symptoms that I saw were not PC serial problems afterall...

It could be a PC problem: the machine on the other end was an i686. But
my SS10's serial output doesn't seem to exhibit the same problems.

I'll try hooking the serial ports on each Sun machine up to each other
tonight and see what happens.

-- 
Joshua Kwan

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Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Meelis Roos]

> > JK> eh:HPYMA PICerO 010ae tent 8:0:0:d:3:7
> >
> > So the same symptoms that I saw were not PC serial problems afterall...
>
> It could be a PC problem: the machine on the other end was an i686. But
> my SS10's serial output doesn't seem to exhibit the same problems.

I recompiled my PC kernel with PREEMPT and 4Kstacks off and sparc64
serial output is still garbled. The PC has been used as the other end of
serial consoles (with minicom) a lot before so I thinks it's sparc64
serial at fault here.

-- 
Meelis Roos (mroos@linux.ee)

Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Ben Collins]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 08:18:46PM +0300, Meelis Roos wrote:
> > > JK> eh:HPYMA PICerO 010ae tent 8:0:0:d:3:7
> > >
> > > So the same symptoms that I saw were not PC serial problems afterall...
> >
> > It could be a PC problem: the machine on the other end was an i686. But
> > my SS10's serial output doesn't seem to exhibit the same problems.
> 
> I recompiled my PC kernel with PREEMPT and 4Kstacks off and sparc64
> serial output is still garbled. The PC has been used as the other end of
> serial consoles (with minicom) a lot before so I thinks it's sparc64
> serial at fault here.

Do you have some sort of strange serial settings on the sparc64, set on
OBP?

-- 
Debian     - http://www.debian.org/
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Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Meelis Roos]

> Do you have some sort of strange serial settings on the sparc64, set on
> OBP?

No:

ttya-ignore-cd=true
ttya-mode–00,8,n,1,-
ttya-rts-dtr-offúlse

-- 
Meelis Roos (mroos@linux.ee)

Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Nicolas Boullis]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 07:06:12PM +0300, Meelis Roos wrote:
> JK> eh:HPYMA PICerO 010ae tent 8:0:0:d:3:7
> 
> So the same symptoms that I saw were not PC serial problems afterall...

Not that sure, since I experienced the same problem between two PC, 
while the one acting as the console was under heavy load...


HTH,

Nicolas

Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Meelis Roos]

>> So the same symptoms that I saw were not PC serial problems afterall...
NB> 
NB> Not that sure, since I experienced the same problem between two PC, 
NB> while the one acting as the console was under heavy load...

I tried 2.4.27-rc3 on the same Ultra5 and same cable and same PC, serial
console works fine. So it's serial console in 2.6 on U5 it seems.

-- 
Meelis Roos

Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Marc Zyngier]

>>>>> "Meelis" = Meelis Roos <mroos@linux.ee> writes:

Meelis> I tried 2.4.27-rc3 on the same Ultra5 and same cable and same
Meelis> PC, serial console works fine. So it's serial console in 2.6
Meelis> on U5 it seems.

For information, my Netra AX1105 runs fine with 2.6.7 and 2.6.8-rc2
using serial console. Uses sunsu, though.

Looks like it is sunsab-related...

	M.
-- 
Places change, faces change. Life is so very strange.

Re: Weird serial problems in 2.6.7

[Ralph Mitchell]

For further information/confirmation, I have an E450 with serial 
console, and there was no problem 2.6.7-rc1.  However, I just booted 
2.6.7 and I'm getting the wierd character problem.  At first glance it 
looked like it might be parity, but then I'd think it would be more 
likely to drop (apparently) random characters, rather than every other 
one...

Anyway, it started OK, then went weird, then recovered:

    Sun Enterprise 450 (4 X UltraSPARC-II 400MHz), No Keyboard
    OpenBoot 3.16, 4096 MB memory installed, Serial #12871523.
    POLB u EEBo rm31. 000/11:2
    [snip lots of garbage...]
    koradsatn. 
o.....±.....)..2éj.Ñ..±....J¡½.É.                                   g

    Gentoo Linux; http://www.gentoo.org/
     Copyright 2001-2004 Gentoo Technologies, Inc.; Distributed under 
the GPL

     * Mounting proc at /proc...  [ ok ]
     * Mounting sysfs at /sys...  [ ok ]

Seems like all the output that matches the 'dmesg' output was weird, 
then it was ok when processing the startup scripts.  Once the boot is 
complete I can login just fine  I have:

    CONFIG_SERIAL_SUNSAB=y
    CONFIG_SERIAL_SUNSAB_CONSOLE=y

in my .config.

Just wondering - could the kernel just be trying to push characters out 
too fast for the chip to handle?

Ralph Mitchell


Marc Zyngier wrote:

>>>>>>"Meelis" = Meelis Roos <mroos@linux.ee> writes:
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>
>Meelis> I tried 2.4.27-rc3 on the same Ultra5 and same cable and same
>Meelis> PC, serial console works fine. So it's serial console in 2.6
>Meelis> on U5 it seems.
>
>For information, my Netra AX1105 runs fine with 2.6.7 and 2.6.8-rc2
>using serial console. Uses sunsu, though.
>
>Looks like it is sunsab-related...
>
>	M.
>  
>