Kernel 126 problem

John Summerfield (summer@os2.ami.com.au)
Mon, 16 Nov 1998 08:17:05 +0800 (WST)


It seems to great a coincidence for these to be unconnected.

I was running my shiny new kernel 2.1.126 (config published here
yesterday, I ignored the sound problem and everything else had built
properly).

tried to access my RedHat 5.1 CD - mounted by autofs - and got to
ls /misc/cd/live
where I pressed <TAB> to expand the list. The system froze at this
point: no mouse, no keyboard and no response to ping from another box.

I pressed the Little Red Button to regain control. I didn't notice anything
odd during the BIOS check, but then I was likely stewing over the
above problem and maybe wouldn't have noticed.

During the boot process, Linux checked partitions on /dev/hda but
complained of timeouts on IDE1 (EIDE1?) and that hdc was busy. These are my
EIDE interfaces and drives:
ide: i82371 PIIX (Triton) on PCI bus 0 function 33
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd800-0xd807
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd808-0xd80f
hda: QUANTUM FIREBALL ST3.2A, 3079MB w/81kB Cache, CHS=782/128/63, UDMA
hdb: QUANTUM FIREBALL_TM2110A, 2014MB w/76kB Cache, CHS=4092/16/63, DMA
hdc: Maxtor 88400D8, 8011MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=16278/16/63, UDMA
hdd: CD-ROM 24X/AKU, ATAPI CDROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15

It detected hdd just fine - there were messages about it.

It is possible that the access to the CD drive was not the problem: it was
spinning and had been read to find the "live" directory.

It happens that hdc is quite important (Most of my Linux system's on it) so
I decided to revert to 2.0.35 for the time being.

It would be a jolly good thing, imv, if Linux responded to C-A-D during the
boot process. Digging out a screwdriver or similar pointy object so I can
press the LRB isn't conducive to a quick change of mind.

This time I DID notice something odd: the BIOS could find my 8 Gb drive???

Time for a real reset: I cycled the power and booted 2.0.35 without mishap.

My guess is that the problem I had when I was trying to access the CD drive
was actually connected to the timeout problem with hdc. I'm reluctant to
beleive the drive's at fault: it's been in place for some months without
problem. It's the kernel that changed.

System;
PII-233 64 Mb SDRAM (not ecc) ASUS P2L97-S
I have scsi which I think irrelevant to the problem:
(scsi0) <Adaptec AIC-7880 Ultra SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 6/0
(scsi0) Wide Channel, SCSI ID=7, 16/255 SCBs
(scsi0) BIOS enabled, IO Port 0xd000, IRQ 9
(scsi0) IO Memory at 0xe3000000, MMAP Memory at 0x4805000
(scsi0) Resetting channel
(scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 406 instructions downloaded
scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.0.19/3.2.4
<Adaptec AIC-7880 Ultra SCSI host adapter>
scsi : 1 host.
(scsi0:0:-1:-1) Scanning channel for devices.
Vendor: FUJITSU Model: M2513A Rev: 1200
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 01
Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI disk total.
(scsi0:0:0:0) Synchronous at 10.0MHz, offset 10.
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 446325 [217 MB] [0.2 GB]
sda: Write Protect is off

Here are the boot-time messages from the boot of the new kernel:
Nov 15 20:43:43 possum kernel: klogd 1.3-3, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Loaded 6944 symbols from /boot/System.map.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Symbols match kernel version 2.1.126.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: No module symbols loaded.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Linux version 2.1.126 (root@possum.os2.ami.com.au) (gcc version 2.7.2.3) #6 Sun Nov 15 20:25:25 WST 1998
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Detected 233868723 Hz processor.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Console: colour VGA+ 80x60
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Calibrating delay loop... 233.47 BogoMIPS
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Memory: 62900k/65536k available (1076k kernel code, 408k reserved, 1116k data, 36k init)
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: CPU: Intel Pentium II (Klamath) stepping 04
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xf0510
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: PCI: Using configuration type 1
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039 for Linux 2.1
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: NET3: Unix domain sockets 0.16 for Linux NET3.038.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Swansea University Computer Society TCP/IP for NET3.037
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Starting kswapd v 1.5
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: PS/2 auxiliary pointing device detected -- driver installed.
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Serial driver version 4.26 with no serial options enabled
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: lp: driver loaded but no devices found
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: APM BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x0b (Driver version 1.6)
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Entry f000:7260 cseg16 f000 dseg fd9d cseg len e6ff, cseg16 len 0, dseg len aa
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: Connection version 1.2
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: AC on line, battery status unknown, battery life unknown
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: battery flag 0x80, battery life unknown
Nov 15 20:43:44 possum kernel: PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 21
Nov 15 20:43:46 possum automount[364]: using kernel protocol version 3
Nov 15 20:43:46 possum automount[369]: using kernel protocol version 3

A couple of less serious problems:
the epic100 network driver included is ancient and should be replaced
I have a printer port, though no printer is attached. Why "lp: driver
loaded but no devices found?" 2.0.35 initialises a driver so I could plug
my printer in later and it would work: it seems that with 2.1.126 this
isn't so.

I plan on upgrading to '128 RSN - just how soon depends on what else I have
to upgrade.

Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.

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