IRQ Issues with 2.6.17.8

IRQ Issues with 2.6.17.8

[Nick Manley]

I've tried all sorts of kernels and distributions with similar
results. I decided to try Arch Linux and compile my own 2.6.17.8
kernel and see if it fixes any of the issues. It doesn't. The system
boots, but I have some odd errors that pevent certain things (like
ndiswrapper for example) from working correctly. In fact, ndiswrapper
causes a kernel panic. And no this isn't an ndiswrapper issue because
the kernel reports errors even without it installed. Ndiswrapper is
just an example of an application that is affected by it. I'll paste
my system files so you can see what errors are being reported.  I've
already attempted acpi=off, irqpoll, noapic, and other similar
commands in different combinations with no luck. The following logs
are from Kernel 2.6.17.8 with NO additional boot parameters attached.
The kernel was compiled on Arch Linux 0.72 with GCC 4.0.3.  Thank you
for your time...

dmesg - http://pastebin.ca/129538
errors.log - http://pastebin.ca/129542
everything.log - http://pastebin.ca/129545
lspci - http://pastebin.ca/129546
messages.log - http://pastebin.ca/129550

Re: IRQ Issues with 2.6.17.8

[Alan Cox]

Looking at the trace I see only a couple of things and neither look like
problems with the kernel

- your distribution seems to be loading the wrong driver for the network
card (8139cp not 8139too). Take that up with the distro provider I
suspect or check your config has the right drivers included

- The BIOS timer setup is a bit odd in the BIOS. From dmesg we select
the timer via virtual wire mode and sort that out

and the "Cannot allocate resource" one looks harmless too.



So what actual problems are you really seeing (other than the expected
'NDISwrapper doesn't work')

Re: IRQ Issues with 2.6.17.8

[Nick Manley]

I'm not a kernel hacker so I don't know a whole lot about it but I
figured that these errors would be the cause of ndiswrapper not
working correctly since they appear even without it installed and not
to mention the odd behavior that occurs.  Depending on exactly which
distro or kernel that I am using, sometimes ndiswrapper will cause a
kernel panic and other times I can load the driver but no new network
interface would appear.  I suspected that the culprit would be that
the kernel isn't properly assigned my wireless card an IRQ.

>From versions 2.6.11 through 2.6.15.x my system would not boot at all
unless I passed some kind of parameter (like irqpoll or acpi=off) and
it wasn't until 2.6.16 that this was fixed.  My line of thinking was
that maybe the problem still existed and that my USB wireless card
(SMC2862-W) was not being recognized.

I'm not a master of kernel messages but a few of the messages such as
the "mp-bios bug" and "cannot allocate region 3 of device" which
appeared during the boot process of several distros made me worry.

I'll report this to the ndiswrapper developers.  I'm sorry if I took
up your time.  I really appreciate your efforts.  Thank you for all of
your help.

On 8/13/06, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Looking at the trace I see only a couple of things and neither look like
> problems with the kernel
>
> - your distribution seems to be loading the wrong driver for the network
> card (8139cp not 8139too). Take that up with the distro provider I
> suspect or check your config has the right drivers included
>
> - The BIOS timer setup is a bit odd in the BIOS. From dmesg we select
> the timer via virtual wire mode and sort that out
>
> and the "Cannot allocate resource" one looks harmless too.
>
>
>
> So what actual problems are you really seeing (other than the expected
> 'NDISwrapper doesn't work')
>
>

Re: IRQ Issues with 2.6.17.8

[Alan Cox]

Ar Sul, 2006-08-13 am 13:02 -0500, ysgrifennodd Nick Manley:
> I'm not a master of kernel messages but a few of the messages such as
> the "mp-bios bug" and "cannot allocate region 3 of device" which
> appeared during the boot process of several distros made me worry.

I can understand that.

> I'll report this to the ndiswrapper developers.  I'm sorry if I took
> up your time.  I really appreciate your efforts.  Thank you for all of
> your help.

Thanks for providing a detailed report which made it easy to
investigate.