From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: linas@austin.ibm.com (Linas Vepstas) Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:01:47 +0000 Subject: Re: Hardware error reporting [was Re: PCI Error reporting] Message-Id: <20061003160147.GC4381@austin.ibm.com> List-Id: References: <20061003152636.GA4381@austin.ibm.com> In-Reply-To: <20061003152636.GA4381@austin.ibm.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable To: linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 04:32:29PM +0100, johnflux@gmail.com wrote: > Hi, > Say you added a card to your system, but didn't quite push it in right. > Or say there's a dirty fingerprint on the pci connecters. The PCI bus > detects that there is an error here, and reports this. =20 Only if you have an IBM PowerPC-based pSeries server (or the pSeries desk-side machines) which have the custom=20 pci host bridges in them that can detect and report such errors. There aren't any Intel/PC desktop machines that have this capability, although I understand that some of the=20 next-generation PCI express busses will have this feature, presumably in the server-class machines first. I haven't seen, touched or smelled PCI express hardware yet. > This is the sort of > thing I want to report to the user. If a card is not seated correctly, or the connector is dirty, (or the voltage is low, etc.) there will be PCI bus parity=20 errors. If the problem is severe, then the PCI subsystem=20 will not be able to detect what kind of card it is, and so no device driver will be selected. I'm not sure what happens in this case. I think what happens is that the kernel assumes=20 that the slot is empty, as it has no particular way of=20 distinguishing empty slots from slots with hard errors. I'm not sure what would happen. One could plug in a known-dead card, and see what happens, or take a cheap card, ad razor-blade off=20 one of the signal pins. For PC-class hardware, I don't think there's any generic way of finding out if something is wrong, although maybe one could make "smart guesses". I'll try some experiments. --linas ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=3Djoin.php&p=3Dsourceforge&CID=DEVD= EV _______________________________________________ Linux-hotplug-devel mailing list http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net Linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-hotplug-devel