had to add irqpoll for Lenny kernel; irqpoll breaks Lenny kernel
[Originally posted to debian-user where there weren't any replies. More
details of hardware etc can be supplied if requested. Please Cc replies to
me.]
I have a machine that was running Etch (and using the 2.6.18-k7 kernel) for
the entire release. It had uptimes over 100 days a few times during that
period.
I recently updated it to Lenny and not too long after rebooting it I saw
kernel messages talking about how noone cared about IRQ 21 interrupts and
to turn on irqpoll. (IRQ 21 was attached to my USB devices and they
weren't working so I had to reboot at this stage.)
When I boot with irqpoll, the machine crashes after some time. Basically
it becomes fully unresponsive - not driving video, the numlock key doesn't
work on the keyboard any more, etc.
I booted it back into Etch's 2.6.18 (accidently with irqpoll) and it died
this horrible death again. I took irqpoll off the kernel arguments and now
the machine has been up and stable for several days.
Any thoughts about this? Is the new need for irqpoll a kernel bug or is it
exposing an underlying hardware problem? If it's the latter why is this
hardware so stable running 2.6.18?
Thoughts appreciated.
Thanks,
Dale
--
Dale E. Martin - dale@the-martins.org
http://the-martins.org/~dmartin
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