[Updated] How To Fix: Firewire IRQ Errors on Reboot
I've had problems with my ThinkPad T61 Freezing on me (wouldn't respond
to keyboard, mouse, nothing). So I reinstalled Debian without the tlp or
sensors stuff. I was back to the old IRQ problems (which turned into
FIFO overrun errors if I put irqpoll in GRUB). It was just a constant
cycle of problems. I finally fixed the errors but the computer is
running quite sluggish now (and I haven't used it enough since to see if
it was going to freeze or not - probably won't again as I'll just use it
as a backup system in case my main system goes down).
Anyway, here's how to fix:
Computer: IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T61 Laptop
OS: Debian 9 (Stretch):
Linux t61 4.9.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.30-2+deb9u3 (2017-08-06)
x86_64 GNU/Linux
Problems:
[ 11.413790] [drm:i965_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* CPU pipe B FIFO
underrun
[ 11.678293] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20160919 for 0000:00:02.0 on
minor 0
[ 12.374019] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
[ 11.070526] [drm] Initialized
[ 11.393344] [drm] Memory usable by graphics device = 512M
[ 11.393348] [drm] Replacing VGA console driver
[ 11.408922] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 2 (21.10.2013).
[ 11.408924] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[ 11.413790] [drm:i965_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* CPU pipe B FIFO
underrun
[ 11.672907] [drm] RC6 disabled, disabling runtime PM support
[ 11.672927] [drm] initialized overlay support
[ 11.678293] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20160919 for 0000:00:02.0 on
minor 0
[ 11.743594] fbcon: inteldrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 12.374019] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
Fix:
1. Download the BIOS Update ISO from here if you do not have the latest
BIOS. To test to see if you do:
$ sudo dmidecode -s bios-version && sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date
7LETD0WW (2.30 )
02/27/2012
2.30 is the latest. If you don't have it, get it here:
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/migr-67989
2. Burn the ISO to a CD-ROM. I tried putting this on a USB stick and
while the ThinkPad can boot from USB, it will NOT boot this particular
ISO from USB. The ReadMe that goes with it also states as such. So it
must be a CD-ROM.
3. Boot the CD-ROM and update the BIOS.
4. Edit /etc/default/grub so that the following line is as shown:
/etc/default/grub: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="irqpoll nomodeset"
irqpoll is right after all, apparently. And nomodeset will remove the
underrun error.
I hope this helps some folks or gives a clue as to what could be going
wrong. If the laptop freezes and goes unresponsive again, I'll have to
do a hard reset (holding the Power button down until it shuts off - can
take 10 or more seconds for that to happen) and then dmesg to see what
went wrong. But for now, this seems to at least get rid of all the errors.
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