Re: fast clock wreaks havoc on amd64 dual core - hp1250n
Nathan,
I can empathise. I have a two week old HP NX6125 notebook that also suffers
from the same problem. I think that you have identified the bug correctly as
#3927. I've just checked bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3927 and the
status is ASSIGNED. The owner is Andi Kleen (at suse). As far as I can tell
there are some patches available, but none deemed "stable" enough to
incorporate into current kernels.
The usual "workarounds" do not work for me either. I have used boot options of
noapic and noapictimer, and both cause a kernel panic at boot. I have tried
no_timer_check=0 and this stops my fans (not something you want on a new
laptop--during the boot phase my CPU temp rapidly rose to about 68 deg C!).
So I used no_timer_check=0 and set acpid to poll my thermal zones to try to
get the fans to kick in and this did not work reliably. So for now I, like
you, am at the mercy of the kernel maintainers. (When I use my laptop, my
typed text usually looks like... thiiiisssssssss dooooooubleeee timer bugggg
reallllllllly succcccccccks. At times I've considered the aerodynamic
properties of this notebook ;-). As far as I can tell, this bug is already a
few months old. If anyone has any news as to when a fix will be available,
there are several out here who would be happy to hear it.
Regards
Richard
On Saturday 22 October 2005 03:52, Nathan O. Siemers wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've spent the last 5 days trying to fix an issue with a brand new
> hp a1250n dual core athlon64 machine. ATI motherboard with embedded
> radeon xpress 200 graphics. I've installed the pure64 sarge
> distribution. This is my first 64 bit debian attempt, although I am
> running a 2 cpu opteron workstation with suse at work.
>
> The system in many ways okay, but there is a serious problem with
> interrupts and clock speed which wreaks general havoc on the machine.
> The clock is running about 2x speed - I think perhaps two clock ticks
> (from each core?) are happening for each one that should. X windows
> keyboard behavior is quite erratic, I often get 2-4 chars repeated for
> each key typed. I believe this is consistent with lots of interrupt
> activity?
>
> Summary of my experiments so far:
>
> 2.6.13.4 kernel
>
> 1. turning off smp in kernel compile configuration does not correct the
> problem.
>
> 2. no_timer_check and/or notsc does not reliably correct the problem - I
> have seen some help for periods of time.
>
> 3. moving from athlon64 to generic x86_64 during kernel compile does
> nothing
>
> 4. no_timer_check pci=noacpi pci=routeirq kernel boot option corrects
> the 2x clock speed problem, but breaks at lot of other things - I am
> running this at the moment so I can use the computer (but my firewire
> drive is not recognized, for example).
>
> 5. PM_timer kernel compile option does nothing
>
> 6. Changing timer frequency does nothing.
>
> I wanted to check with older 2.6 kernels but experience a failed boot on
> stock debian 2.6.8 amd64-smp kernel, I don't this is indicative of a
> problem other than misconfiguration of grub or devfs subsystems (there
> is a pivot_root at boot time that fails)...
>
> some interesting log entries:
>
> kern.log:
> Oct 18 14:57:48 localhost kernel: Losing some ticks... checking if CPU
> frequency changed.
>
> Oct 18 23:36:50 line kernel: Your time source seems to be instable or
> some driver is hogging interupts
> Oct 19 05:40:05 line kernel: rtc: lost some interrupts at 2048Hz.
> Oct 19 05:49:33 line kernel: rtc: lost some interrupts at 2048Hz.
>
> This seems like it could be related to kernel bug 3927:
>
> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3927
>
> which has been marked as "resolved" but my reading suggest that a
> sufficient number of people found workarounds to let the bug subside
> rather than fixing it...
>
> In any case, my deep appreciation to anyone who has a solution after
> days of kernel recompiles and rebooting with various boot options.
> Happy to send more detailed logs and kernel compile options if there is
> interest.
>
> Nathan
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