Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
10 Posts
0
614757
October 19th, 2006 14:00
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
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
No Events found!
t35t0r
16 Posts
0
December 9th, 2006 12:00
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
batsy
6 Posts
0
December 9th, 2006 17:00
usb-handoff i8042.nomux
Make sure you don't have any acpi or apic options on the line... Cheers!
t35t0r
16 Posts
0
December 10th, 2006 18:00
i8042.nomux [HW] Don't check presence of an active multiplexing controller
from http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org/567230.html:
"usb-handoff is a kernel option that enables a PCI quirk routine that takes the USB controller out of BIOS's hands. Until that is done (the linux USB drivers also do it, only later), the BIOS owns the USB controller and tries to emulate a PS/2 mouse and keyboard for systems which can't handle USB."
Looking in /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb/host/pci-quirks.c there is a comment in the code that says:
"EHCI 0.96 and later may have "extended capabilities" spec section 5.1 explains the bios handoff, e.g. for booting from USB disk or using a usb keyboard"
..well if it works great, if not let the dell bashing resume :) .
noisefan
7 Posts
0
December 11th, 2006 06:00
Thanks in advance
Mike
EDIT: Sorry, but after writing this post, Murphi's law occured here. Mouse hangs and keyboard after a while, too.
My Linux distribution is Fedora Core 6, Kernel 2.6.18-1.2849. I also noticed, that keyboard hangs, if there is heavy hdd access like makewhatis.cron-weekly...
Message Edited by noisefan on 12-11-200602:55 AM
Hephaistos2
6 Posts
0
December 11th, 2006 08:00
But I use now a USB hub, externally powered. And everything works fine : SMP, sound, CD burning. Moreover the mouse and keyboard are recognized at the beginning and I can switch between Linux and XP with no problem.
Duli
31 Posts
0
December 11th, 2006 11:00
Hephaistos2
6 Posts
0
December 11th, 2006 14:00
I have a E521 with Athlon 64 X2 4200. I have added a better graphic card (Leadtek WinFast A7600 GS), and this externally powered USB hub (APM).
I have installed Slackware for AMD64 (slamd64), and kernel 2.6.19. For the installation the DVD-ROM was not found (but the system was booted from it), and I had to copy all the data in the NTFS partition from XP before installing Slackware.
For X11, I use the Nvidia driver 1.0-9631.
I plan to install also Gentoo (on a new hard disk), and verified already that the kernel from the installation CD recognizes the network card. So it should be possible to install Gentoo without having a NTFS partition. For the gentoo kernel to boot I had to choose "gentoo-nofb acpi=noirq".
Lobotomik
1 Rookie
•
20 Posts
0
December 12th, 2006 10:00
The first distro I have tried that works fine out of the box is OpenSuse 10.2 (it has kernel 2.6.18.3, I believe). It is a pity that I totally hated it for these reasons:
* It does not mount NTFS partitions for alleged patent problems.
* It does not show long filenames in FAT32 partitions for alleged patent problems.
* It does not mount my iPod for alleged permission problems.
* Gstreamer has no mp3 codecs for alleged patent problems. Not that it matters, when I've got no music to play with no iPod and no NTFS partitions. There are no codecs for mpeg, mpeg2 or mpeg4, aac or anything of interest either. You've got Theora and ogg, and that's it. Well, and there's Banshee-Helix and a proprietary mp3 decoder. Of course, no DVD reproduction.
If these limitations don't bother you, OpenSuse works OK on the E521. And compiz eye-candy would be just a click away if the built-in nVidia graphics chip were recognized (which it isn't). I might painstakingly work around all those limitations, but I'm feeling too tired.
Message Edited by NRios on 12-12-200606:24 AM
mwette
38 Posts
0
December 12th, 2006 11:00
By default the machine does not boot dual processors. Under this configuration
I have no problems with the USB mouse or keyboard. I found that with the first
FC6 kernel 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 it would boot both CPUs if I used "acpi=off" option.
The newer kernel 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6 would not boot with the "acpi=off" option,
but would with "acpi=off" and "lacpi".
I also noticed that when I'm running both cores (booting "acpi=off" "lapic")
that interrupts on IRQ5, which handles the mouse, keyboard and ethernet, are
not being balanced: CPU 1 gets about 130 interrupts and then all the rest go
to CPU 0.
Plea to others: If you report workability please provide which architecture
(i386 versus x86_64) you are using. I have been looking at the kernel source
and there seem to be some differences here.
dmoroian
7 Posts
0
December 12th, 2006 20:00
I bought an e521 too, and had some hard time with it.
I tried several linux distributions and finally I succeded with suse 10.1
The solution for the freezing mouse is to use a self powered usb hub, like the one that comes on the screen (and I was wondering what was the purpose for that ).
The next problem was the sound. This was solved installing the last alsa distribution (1.0.13) together with the last kernel 2.6.19.1.
I am using the following kernel booting parameters: acpi=noirq vga=0x31a
It sees both cores. The system works excelent, although it was hard to make it work!
I hope this will be usefull for somebody,
Dragos
#######################################################################
The content of the /proc/cpuinfo and /proc/interrupts:
Info
My .config file:
.config
Message Edited by dmoroian on 12-12-200604:48 PM
Message Edited by dmoroian on 12-13-200602:08 AM
Message Edited by dmoroian on 12-13-200604:13 PM
t35t0r
16 Posts
0
December 12th, 2006 21:00
Here are some places where you can paste:
http://rafb.net/paste
http://pastebin.com
this goes for others too with long messages, paste your cpuinfo/interrupts elsewhere or cut out only the relevant portions.
Hephaistos2
6 Posts
0
December 13th, 2006 07:00
Hi dmoroian,
Your /proc/cpuinfo seems strange. For my Athlon X2 4200+, I get the following :
cpu MHz : 2200.00
bogomips : 4409.59
and you should obtain
cpu MHz : 2600.00
bogomips : 5200.00
T
dmoroian
7 Posts
0
December 13th, 2006 20:00
Though, I think it has something to do with powernow-k8 (which I don't know what it is). This is what dmesg prints at the end:
powernow-k8: Found 2 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ processors (version 2.00.00)
powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0x12 (2600 MHz), vid 0x8
powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0x10 (2400 MHz), vid 0xa
powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0xe (2200 MHz), vid 0xc
powernow-k8: 3 : fid 0xc (2000 MHz), vid 0xe
powernow-k8: 4 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x10
powernow-k8: 5 : fid 0x2 (1000 MHz), vid 0x12
Dragos
Message Edited by dmoroian on 12-13-200604:58 PM
Message Edited by dmoroian on 12-14-200602:58 AM
Hephaistos2
6 Posts
0
December 14th, 2006 04:00
http://rafb.net/paste/results/oYXuxy39.html
http://rafb.net/paste/results/MzHHDC87.html
http://rafb.net/paste/results/UZezTz58.html
Duli
31 Posts
0
December 19th, 2006 23:00
Interesing info about this issue here.
It seems a BIOS problem.
I think DELL should fix it quickly!
Cheers,
Duli
Message Edited by Duli on 12-20-200605:42 AM