Linux USB Problems on Dimension E521 AMD 64 X2

Hi,

Anyone else try running Linux (in my case Ubuntu 6.06) on the E521 with the AMD 64 X2 processor? I am having a problem when using xorg where my USB devices, more often my mouse, but my keyboard has had the problem as well stops working. It is almost like the interrupts start getting masked, but it isn't that. Because when the mouse stops working I am usually able to still use the keyboard.

It happens after a while, and usually in times of heavy use. I guess really instead of heavy I would say normal. But it has never happened that it will be working and then I let it lay idle for a while and then reach for it again and it be frozen.

This started happening under the amd64 version of Ubuntu but I have tried several different versions by now and the problem continues to happen.

As far as troubleshooting it has been a real pain. There is never a message in the kernel log or shown by running dmesg. Actually once or twice I have seen the irq status -71 received, but I am pretty sure that is not the cause, becuase it has only happened about twice out of maybe 40 occurances. And there is no message in the Xorg log either.

I have tried the default amd64-generic kernel the latest amd64-generic, the latest amd64-k8 kernel (I think 2.6.15-27.48) I have tried running the i386 uniprocessor kernel and the latest k7-smp kernel. All of them have the same problem.

In an effort to get to the bottom of it I have re-compiled the kernel according to the directions here: http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation_Dapper and turned on debugfs and collected data, but there doesn't seem to be anything of interest. It seems I get hundreds of thousands of lines of -115 status (Which I believe is the controller just telling the device that yeah, I hear ya and I am going to do something EINPROGRESS) and then nothing. The mouse appears to continue to function at least the circuit which senses movement and turns the LED into bright mode. And under Windows I have had no problems at all.

The only solution that always works is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it, which grabs a new device file /dev/input/event7 and probably does some other magic registers with the USB controller, and a bunch of other stuff and then the mouse starts working again.

The only other consistent problem I have noted is the IOAPIC stuff complains about a bug, and sometimes it won't boot and panics, other times it figures out a way to get by and does so. Because of this I have tried booting with noapic and other than changing the way /proc/interrupts looks there seems to be no change in the problem. Eventually under usage the mouse stops responding entirely. Even looking at cat /dev/input/mice there is nothing getting there.

I have upgraded the BIOS to 1.0.3 that had no effect. And also turned off the Cool and Quiet support in the bios.

Any thoughts, recommendations of how to proceed, or any other suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you,
Kevin