Re: Patch needed for ASUS EEEPC 701 2.6.27 (perhaps a regession)

Alan Jenkins
2008-10-14T08:51:17Z

Pavel Machek wrote:
> On Sat 2008-10-11 15:50:21, Alan Jenkins wrote:
>> Robert Goldner wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am a happy user of an asus eeepc 701 with an self-made kernel 2.6.27.
>>> Its working quite good, but there is one patch needed to avoid problems
>>> related to ACPI and Hotkeys.
>>> After using a few hotkeys there comes a message in syslog like:
>>> ACPI: EC: GPE storm detected, disabling EC GPE
>>> and no hotkey event is recognized any more. This is quite bad on a nettop.
>> Hi, I reported the original bug. It is a regression, though the issue
>> has been present for a few kernel versions now.
>>
>> I recommend that you avoid reproducing the problem. I now have to add
>> "noapic" to the boot options on my EeePC, otherwise it randomly hangs /
>> reboots when I press hotkeys - I think it damaged the hardware.
>
> I guess your hw went bad for some other reason. Restore original
> system and if it is still broken, RMA?
>

It could be a coincidence. But it's suspicious enough to advise caution. We know what the bug is, and we have a very nice workaround queued up now. There's no reason to test any more of these specific systems to destruction :).

I did try re-installing off the vendor DVD and it was still broken. I fear I bought it from the wrong place to get sympathetic _frontline_ support / warrantee. I'm not interested in RMA back to Asus - too much work and downtime for a cheap system, when I have an easy workaround. I haven't noticed any problems with "noapic".

The symptoms strongly suggest overflow in an event buffer or counter maintained by the Embedded Controller. So the EC firmware may have a bug, of the sort that results in "unspecified behaviour". A bug in a special purpose (read: not subject to wide testing) subsystem which has direct connections to things like frequency and voltage control.

Hopefully I'm wrong, and I don't really know what I'm talking about here.

Regards
Alan