Bug#459861: linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64: usb 2 uses irq 7, with no 2.0 device attached, irq 7 disabled, "nobody cared"
Package: linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64
Version: 2.6.18.dfsg.1-17
Severity: normal
I have a usb 2.0 160 GB disk drive which I've been trying to use with my
HP laptop, but after some period of time (usually short, less than 2
minutes) the disk would "die".
Research led to a possible solution, using sdparm to clear STANDBY,
which is set by default for this drive (Seagate Freeagent Go). This
seemed to work, initially, but it didn't "hold". Checked the STANDBY
state, it was still cleared.
And, other usb 2.0 devices also failed to work. Extensive further
research and testing showed that all these devices would work for a
short period of time before failing.
The light dawned when I noted that the usb 2.0 interface uses IRQ 7,
which was getting disabled shortly after startup, due to a spurious
interrupt (nobody cared).
With a usb device inserted while booting, or quickly attached after
booting, along with mounting the disk device, there were no spurious
interrupts, and the device remained usable. That is, until it/they
waswere unmounted, at which point, with no usb 2.0 devices, a spurious
interrupt would happen and usb 2.0 would not work any more.
As proof of concept, I've moved my full system to the Freeagent disk and
can boot to it, and run for hours, without issues.
I have also booted a Suse 9.1 Live CD and have used the usb 2.0 devices
without problems, even though dmesg does have one spurious interrupt
error related to irq 7. The kernel version is 2.6.4
My system is an HP Pavilion dv9000. The usb 2.0 hardware is reported as:
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)\
(prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 30b7
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 7
Memory at b0005000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)[size=256]
Capabilities: [44] Debug port
Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-5-amd64
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Versions of packages linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64 depends on:
ii cor 5.97-5.3 The GNU core utilities
ii deb 1.5.11etch1 Debian configuration management sy
ii e2f 1.39+1.40-WIP-2006.11.14+dfsg-2etch1 ext2 file system utilities and lib
ii ini 0.85h tools for generating an initramfs
ii mod 3.3-pre4-2 tools for managing Linux kernel mo
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64 recommends no packages.
-- debconf information:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/create-kimage-link-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
shared/kernel-image/really-run-bootloader: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/old-system-map-link-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/initrd-2.6.18-5-amd64:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/elilo-initrd-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/depmod-error-2.6.18-5-amd64: false
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/bootloader-initrd-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
* linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/already-running-this-2.6.18-5-amd64:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/prerm/removing-running-kernel-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/lilo-initrd-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/abort-overwrite-2.6.18-5-amd64:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/failed-to-move-modules-2.6.18-5-amd64:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/prerm/would-invalidate-boot-loader-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/bootloader-error-2.6.18-5-amd64:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/old-initrd-link-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/overwriting-modules-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/old-dir-initrd-link-2.6.18-5-amd64: true
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/lilo-has-ramdisk:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/depmod-error-initrd-2.6.18-5-amd64: false
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/bootloader-test-error-2.6.18-5-amd64:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/postinst/kimage-is-a-directory:
linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64/preinst/abort-install-2.6.18-5-amd64:
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