Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Vondricka]

Hi,
I have a Gericom Supersonic M6T notebook and therefore I need ACPI IRQ-routing 
to use the modem, sound, network and pcmcia cards, because the BIOS is 
probably not really doing much with assigning IRQ to them. All the subsystems 
share either IRQ 5 or 10 together with others.

---- PROBLEMS in detail: -------------

In the last few months I have realized freezing of the whole system. I use 
ACPI patches since the beginning and I've never had problems until about the 
time I started to use PCMCIA 802.11b cards. Now I have problems even if I do 
not use them just at the moment. The computer is freezing completely mostly 
when manipulating the PCMCIA cards (insert, eject), starting video or audio 
playing, aso. But also without any clear reason. Sometimes everything is OK, 
sometimes just a small operation freezes the whole system. Mainly when the 
computer has been running for a longer time (however, I don't suppose the 
problem is in overheating), it becames more and more unstable.

The situation was OK for a long time with kernel 2.4.17 (+ACPI +some temporary 
irq-routing patch) and later mainly 2.4.19 with the appropriate ACPI 
(20020815 or 20020918, do not remember). Then the problems started with 
2.4.20 (+ACPI 20021122 patch). After freezing, even the older kernel 2.4.19 
paniced withy some "Aiee! ..." message already by booting/fixing the 
filesystem. I didn't help to turn off the machine. I had to run 2.4.20 again 
and then reboot to 2.4.19, if it managed to fix the disk before freezing 
again. However, soon the 2.4.19 kernel began to freeze as well. I removed the 
processor.o module code and the system worked better for a while - no more 
slowdown down to complete freezing. But now it freezes again quite often, 
unexpectedly, without the slowdowns.

2.4.19 reportes some ACPI Debug numbers like 000000001 or 00000004D or 
00000004B (two times, usually after 000000001) when started after crash (and 
poweroff!) of the 2.4.20 kernel.

I tried 2.4.21-pre4 with the latest 20030228 patch. The result: freezing 
Konsole in KDE just after starting the machine, then freezing the whole 
keyboard - unable to switch to any text console, unable to do anything, maybe 
move the mouse cursor. Completely useless.

----- SHORTLY - MY QUESTION: --------------
Could you at least not tell me, if this is a hardware or a software problem of 
ACPI, please? Should I ask for warranty repair of my notebook (I still have 
one year, I believe) or just patiently wait for another ACPI patch releases? 
Can I send you more debug info, how?
----------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you very much for your effort,
Pavel


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> Could you at least not tell me, if this is a hardware or a software problem of 
> ACPI, please? Should I ask for warranty repair of my notebook (I still have 
> one year, I believe) or just patiently wait for another ACPI patch releases? 
> Can I send you more debug info, how?

Try it without acpi, if it still locks randomly, blame hardware, else
blame acpi.
									Pavel

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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Ducrot Bruno]

On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 11:08:02PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > Could you at least not tell me, if this is a hardware or a software problem of 
> > ACPI, please? Should I ask for warranty repair of my notebook (I still have 
> > one year, I believe) or just patiently wait for another ACPI patch releases? 
> > Can I send you more debug info, how?
> 
> Try it without acpi, if it still locks randomly, blame hardware, else
> blame acpi.
> 									Pavel

He said he *need* acpi for irq routing.  I guess his bios is legacy free.

Cheers,

-- 
Ducrot Bruno

--  Which is worse:  ignorance or apathy?
--  Don't know.  Don't care.


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Arndt Schoenewald]

Hi Pavel,

strange, I also have a Gericom 1st Supersonic M6-T, and it also
sometimes locks up during booting or when repeatedly removing and
inserting a PCMCIA WLAN card, but I don't have the same amount of
problems that you have. My machine runs mostly stable with all of

    Linux 2.4.18      + acpi-20020517
    Linux 2.4.19      + acpi-20020821
    Linux 2.4.20      + acpi-20030228
and Linux 2.4.21-pre5 + acpi-20030228

(These are the kernels that I still have installed.)

However, I had problems with KDE 3.1 and

    Linux 2.4.20      + acpi-20021212
and Linux 2.4.21-pre4 + acpi-20030123

The KDE startup would hang during the "initializing devices" phase;
often the machine would freeze, and after rebooting I had files with
invalid names on my ext3 partitions (files with \0 in the file name).
Therefore, I had to go back to Linux 2.4.19 + acpi-20020821 to use KDE
3.1 until I found out that the problems are gone with acpi-20030228.
(KDE 2.2 did always work without any problems.)

BTW, I am using Debian "sid" (aka unstable).

Good luck,
Arndt

-- 
Arndt Schönewald <abs-SA7OhAOe25xnNxvc45mVi0K323yFvGpRdefyYXQ/eNw@public.gmane.org>, Software Developer
Quelltext AG (http://www.quelltext-ag.de), Dortmund, Germany


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Arndt Schoenewald]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 10:16:18AM +0100, Ducrot Bruno wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 11:08:02PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > > Could you at least not tell me, if this is a hardware or a
> > > software problem of ACPI, please? Should I ask for warranty repair
> > > of my notebook (I still have one year, I believe) or just
> > > patiently wait for another ACPI patch releases? Can I send you
> > > more debug info, how?
> > 
> > Try it without acpi, if it still locks randomly, blame hardware, else
> > blame acpi.
> > 									Pavel
> 
> He said he *need* acpi for irq routing.  I guess his bios is legacy free.

The Gericom M6-T is kind of strange; it will boot without ACPI, but many
of the builtin PCI devices (e.g. NIC, firewire, modem) are not functional,
apparently because the BIOS doesn't set their IRQ line to level-triggered.
The ACPI patch has been working for this machine since May 2002 when the
call to eisa_set_level_irq() got included.

Arndt


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> > > Could you at least not tell me, if this is a hardware or a software problem of 
> > > ACPI, please? Should I ask for warranty repair of my notebook (I still have 
> > > one year, I believe) or just patiently wait for another ACPI patch releases? 
> > > Can I send you more debug info, how?
> > 
> > Try it without acpi, if it still locks randomly, blame hardware, else
> > blame acpi.
> > 									Pavel
> 
> He said he *need* acpi for irq routing.  I guess his bios is legacy free.

He said he needs it for things like sound and modem. That should still
enable him to run some stress test (make -j?) without it.
									Pavel
-- 
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...vgf orggre jura vgf serr.


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Arndt Schoenewald]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 01:51:38PM -0100, Pavel Vondricka wrote:
> Thanks,
> I also use KDE 3.1, but my system is based on RedHat 8.0. The computer really 
> behaves strange. I have two more questions:
> 
> Where can I get acpi 20030306? Some CVS download, you mean?

No, "abra.20030306" is the version number of my installed kernel, not
the ACPI patch (I am using acpi-20030228).

> Does it matter if patching the kernel shows messages like "Hunk XXXX suceeded 
> at position -235 ..."? Lately I can never patch any kernel without these 
> warnings. Does ACPI use another kind of kernel than vanilla to make patches 
> to?

The message "Hunk XXXX suceeded at position -235" is benign; you need to
worry only if hunks are rejected (well, actually you don't worry, but
apply the respective changes by hand).

The ACPI patches published on http://sf.net/projects/acpi are always
taken against the plain and vanilla kernel sources from www.kernel.org.
Many Linux distributions like RedHat, SuSE, Debian etc are known to
distribute altered sources, and the ACPI patch may not cleanly apply
against these.

> > that my Prism 3 based WLAN card does not longer work with this kernel
> > as the orinoco module has unresolved symbols (perhaps a problem with

I just found that this problem goes away if I use the kernel-supplied
PCMCIA support (before I was using the separate PCMCIA support from the
pcmcia-cs package).

> Personally, I use the hostap drivers (a prism 2.5 card), which is known to 
> generate lots of interreupts.

What driver is this? I haven't heard of "hostap".

> However, as I told you, the system often hangs even though I do not
> use the card.

Do you mean: Even though the card is not inserted?

> And independently on the system load!!! It 
> doesn't hang because of overload. It hangs also when I leave my computer for 
> a few minutes! Sometimes. Sometimes it works 20 hours without problems - I 
> managed to compile KDE 3.1 over night. The computer started hanging the next 
> day, when I tried to run it. Mainly when I played with transparency settings 
> of menus, aso. in KDE look&feel. Then I removed the processor.o module from 
> the kernel and it became stable again. But one or to days later it started 
> hanging again, even without the processor.o module.

I have always compiled all ACPI options directly into the kernel, i.e.
not as modules. Some people say that the ACPI stuff doesn't work as well
as modules, but don't know whether this is still true. But in any case,
compiling ACPI directly into the kernel is the safest choice.

> So, I think it would hardly mean anything if I managed to run my computer for 
> one week without problems without ACPI. This can happen even with ACPI. Could 
> the problem be some wrong way of handling interrupts at run-time? Then I 
> wouldn't find the problem anyway, because I couldn't use my modem, eth0, 
> pcmcia and sound without ACPI.Is there any way to find out if it is ACPI 
> software or hardware that handles these interrputs wrongly (if the problem 
> would be here)?

Don't know. Perhaps the problem is your WLAN card and/or its driver? Or
perhaps you do have a hardware problem. Is the machine stable under XP?

BTW, PCMCIA does work even without the ACPI patch, at least if you use
the external PCMCIA support. I have been able to use a PCMCIA network
card before I had the ACPI patch to enable my builtin NIC.

Good luck,
Arndt


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Vondricka]

Thanks,
I also use KDE 3.1, but my system is based on RedHat 8.0. The computer really 
behaves strange. I have two more questions:

Where can I get acpi 20030306? Some CVS download, you mean?

Does it matter if patching the kernel shows messages like "Hunk XXXX suceeded 
at position -235 ..."? Lately I can never patch any kernel without these 
warnings. Does ACPI use another kind of kernel than vanilla to make patches 
to?

> that my Prism 3 based WLAN card does not longer work with this kernel
> as the orinoco module has unresolved symbols (perhaps a problem with

Personally, I use the hostap drivers (a prism 2.5 card), which is known to 
generate lots of interreupts. However, as I told you, the system often hangs 
even though I do not use the card. And independently on the system load!!! It 
doesn't hang because of overload. It hangs also when I leave my computer for 
a few minutes! Sometimes. Sometimes it works 20 hours without problems - I 
managed to compile KDE 3.1 over night. The computer started hanging the next 
day, when I tried to run it. Mainly when I played with transparency settings 
of menus, aso. in KDE look&feel. Then I removed the processor.o module from 
the kernel and it became stable again. But one or to days later it started 
hanging again, even without the processor.o module.

So, I think it would hardly mean anything if I managed to run my computer for 
one week without problems without ACPI. This can happen even with ACPI. Could 
the problem be some wrong way of handling interrupts at run-time? Then I 
wouldn't find the problem anyway, because I couldn't use my modem, eth0, 
pcmcia and sound without ACPI.Is there any way to find out if it is ACPI 
software or hardware that handles these interrputs wrongly (if the problem 
would be here)?

Anyway, thanks for the patch!
Pavel

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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Ducrot Bruno]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:18:53PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > > > Could you at least not tell me, if this is a hardware or a software problem of 
> > > > ACPI, please? Should I ask for warranty repair of my notebook (I still have 
> > > > one year, I believe) or just patiently wait for another ACPI patch releases? 
> > > > Can I send you more debug info, how?
> > > 
> > > Try it without acpi, if it still locks randomly, blame hardware, else
> > > blame acpi.
> > > 									Pavel
> > 
> > He said he *need* acpi for irq routing.  I guess his bios is legacy free.
> 
> He said he needs it for things like sound and modem. That should still
> enable him to run some stress test (make -j?) without it.

Correct.  But then we can not determine if the problem come from ACPI, or
from one of his devices (Hey, we don't know what is his modem.  If it is
a win one with a propritary driver..).

-- 
Ducrot Bruno

--  Which is worse:  ignorance or apathy?
--  Don't know.  Don't care.


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Vondricka]

Yes, it is a winmodem (ltmodem) and it has been OK all the time. I would 
suspect the HostAP WiFi driver, which usually has problems - our WiFi router 
locked up lately and there is surely no ACPI in the kernel. But the problem 
often remains even though I do not use (insert) the card and the driver 
module is not loaded.

Pavel

> On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:18:53PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > > > > Could you at least not tell me, if this is a hardware or a software
> > > > > problem of ACPI, please? Should I ask for warranty repair of my
> > > > > notebook (I still have one year, I believe) or just patiently wait
> > > > > for another ACPI patch releases? Can I send you more debug info,
> > > > > how?
> > > >
> > > > Try it without acpi, if it still locks randomly, blame hardware, else
> > > > blame acpi.
> > > > 									Pavel
> > >
> > > He said he *need* acpi for irq routing.  I guess his bios is legacy
> > > free.
> >
> > He said he needs it for things like sound and modem. That should still
> > enable him to run some stress test (make -j?) without it.
>
> Correct.  But then we can not determine if the problem come from ACPI, or
> from one of his devices (Hey, we don't know what is his modem.  If it is
> a win one with a propritary driver..).

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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> Yes, it is a winmodem (ltmodem) and it has been OK all the time. I
>would 

If you are using binary-only module... Well... Do not complain.

								Pavel
-- 
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...vgf orggre jura vgf serr.


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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Vondricka]

> If you are using binary-only module... Well... Do not complain.

I compiled the ltmodem package myself. I think, there is some precompiled 
binary module inside already. However, the system was stable before, even 
though I used a module, which officially SHOULDN'T compile and run with gcc 
3.2 compiler/ compiled kernel - I had to use "forced insmode" and it run and 
was stable! Now I use officially supported version for gcc3.2 and do not need 
forced insmod. And, BTW, I often do not use the modem (i.e. the module is 
usually not loaded at all, so far I know) and the computer HAS problems. 
There are mostly no problems when using the modem.

Pavel
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Re: Freezing more and more (Gericom Supersonic M6T)

[Pavel Vondricka]

By the way, do you not use ALSA as well? I could also suspect these drivers 
(or the combination of them), because they are also under development and I 
still use some 0.90rc5 version. The computer very often hangs when playing 
audio as well.

> "abra" is the name of my machine. I am using Debian; when I compile a
> kernel, I make a Debian package out of it, and use «machine name».«date»
> as the version number for this package, i.e. the package file gets called

Oh, I see!

> Yes, strange. Perhaps you are applying the ACPI patch to a different
> version of the kernel sources?

Of course not :-( ...

> Yes, the very first insertion of a card is not noticed, but if I take
> out the card and insert it once again, it works (all subsequent
> insertions are properly noticed, too).

Then it hangs on my computer. But may be it's because of the hostap, may be 
it's because of the external pcmcia, may be it's because of the card (my 
colleagues had problems using it under windows, it hangs as well under some 
conditions!)

Thanks,
Pavel


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