Bug#252289: general: system clock goes chaoticly causing system breakdown

[Antos Andras <antos@szit.bme.hu>]

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Antos Andras wrote:
> > I observed that in the timer line of /proc/interrupts, while normally the
> > number increases by cc. 99.8-101.6 in a sec, when the timer "is stuck" it
> > _does not increase at all_ shown by a command
> >
> > # while true; do grep timer /proc/interrupts; done
> >
> > But if I press a key while the command above is running, then the number
> > increases by 2!

Some more observation: while in /proc/interrupts the counter in line
  0:     687579    IO-APIC-edge  timer
is stuck, the counter in line
LOC:     778507
is increasing at cc. 100HZ. The counter in line
  1:      36989    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
is also increases by 2 as I press a key.

> Whatever is triggering it might be something you run, or the fact that 
> you used the keyboard, or anything like that. But it is definatley not 
> something fiddling with the clock "normally". It could be a software 
> iteration (probably something dealing with interrupts and the APIC), or 
> a hardware issue.

I agree. My feeling is that it is sometimes triggered simply by keyboard 
or mouse use.

> It only happens when you log using the console, right?  ssh logins never
> cause the problem?

Yes, console or xdm. I haven't experienced the problem during ssh logins.

> remove the keyboard (and if you use it, the mouse), and attach an USB 
> keyboard (and USB mouse). If your keyboard is an USB one, switch 
> keyboards and USB port *group*. Does that fix the problem?

I have been using a PS2 mouse and (I think) a PS2 keyboard (it's an IBM 
NetVista machine with its original mouse & keyboard). I'll try to get USB ones.

> Disable ACPI, APM and IOAPIC.  Does that fix the problem?  If so, please
> narrow down what subsystem is causing the problem.

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> That's probably a misconfigured APIC. Kernel/hardware bug. Don't use
> the APIC, or find a fix for your motherboard.

Do you mean to recompile a kernel with some options disabled ? If yes, 
which of the following options should I disable:

CONFIG_X86_GOOD_APIC=y
CONFIG_X86_UP_APIC=y
CONFIG_X86_UP_IOAPIC=y
CONFIG_X86_LOCAL_APIC=y
CONFIG_X86_IO_APIC=y

CONFIG_APM=m
CONFIG_APM_RTC_IS_GMT=y

CONFIG_HOTPLUG_PCI_ACPI=m
CONFIG_ACPI=y
CONFIG_ACPI_blabla=y
?
(Btw, CONFIG_ACPI has been already disabled in my custom kernel which also 
showed the problem.)

Thanks for your help.
Andras