The SpedStep crash problem ...
OK, we are now a couple of people here on the list who are struggling with
random crashes of our laptops. The standard solution is to disable SpeedStep
in the BIOS. Until now this haven't helped on my machine, but I have many
SpeedStep settings and I still haven't tried all of them.
Disabling SpeedStep is a workaround, but it's not acceptible for me as a
private laptop buyer. What is the problem with Linux and SpeedStep? Does it
affect all machines (judgeing from this list, no) and what is that happen? In
my own case it has always happened while running on AC power, but a good
explanation to this is that I run on AC 99% of the time. My model of machine[1]
can be delivered with Linux pre-installed by IBM and they don't mention any
problems nor do they mention that SpeedStep has been disabled so they must have
a workaround.
I found this post for the linux kernel list with Google:
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0105.3/1308.html
Its Pavel Machek posting a path for arch/i386/kernel/time.c which might be
fixing a problem for an unhappy T20 owner. There is no reply to the post and
I can't find any indication in time.c (in 2.4.12) that is has been added to
the Linus tree. Did this patch work for anyone? Is it Linux which has a
problem with speedstep or is it hardware related?
As I mentioned before disabling SpeedStep is not a solution (only a workaround)
to the problem. The last option I need to test for my SpeedSetting is
disabled. I have intentionally left this for last because it means that my CPU
is clocked down from 800 to 650Mhz. My laptop is my only newer machine (the
alternative is a desktop 133Mhz pentium). A 150Mhz stepdown in clock speed is
not something I can accept (OK when running on battery, but not on AC).
This post, and hopefully it's reply's, are a precedent to me contacting IBM
Denmark who, hopefully can provide an acceptable solution. I am, as you might
have guessed, angry and disappointed with this problem. I was confident
buying this machine because it's can be shipped with Linux and I therefore
took for granted that it would run flawlessly, but no. It could be a bug in
my hardware, but there is also other people with this problem, do they all
have defect machines?
[1]My machine is an IBM T22 and I'm using kernel 2.4.5 with SGI XFS 1.0.1
patched in.
--
Martin Skøtt
martin@z3n.dk
Reply to: