Hello everybody. Today (errrrrr, yesterday, since it is now well past midnight and I am still pulling my hair off!), UPS brought me 10.0. With eager anticipation I started upgrading 9.3 to 10.0 on my Presario 3240 laptop (2.2 GHz AMD64 based, nVidia chipset, nVidia GeForce4 440, Go with 64MB dedicated video memory). Now I regret it ever doing this upgrade. Below I describe some of the many problems I am facing after the upgrade and then provide what I think are pertinent syslogs. --What happened to alsaplayer? It seems it has disappeared, even from the repositories! --Often the cursor does not "grab" when it is supposed to (left-clicking on sliders or window frames for resizing or when attempting to "block" text to be pasted by left-clicking and dragging --I use KDE). --The internet connection unexpectedly freezes after about 10 minutes of uptime (it did not do it just before the upgrade and after the upgrade I tested it with a 32-bit system; the ethernet cable and the cable modem seem to work fine with the 32-bit system --running 32-bit SuSE 9.3). This happens even if there is virtually no internet activity. See the pertinent syslogs below. Could this be a kernel problem? 'uname -r' responds '2.6.13-15-default', the stock SuSE kernel. --Shutdown takes forever (maybe over a minute) to commence. --Lost ticks are reported in the syslogs, even booting with the 'no_timer_check' kernel directive. (And no, I need ACPI because this is a laptop!) See the pertinent syslogs below. --DMA and IRQ errors also get registered in the syslogs, as you can see below. --The upgrade trashed all my "politically incorrect" media players! (I remember that before SuSE was aquired by Novel, it offered, on the installation CD/DVD, rpms for hard-to-install media players. Those were the days!) with some effort, I can tolerate "politically correct" libraries, such as 'xine-lib', if I know what I have to delete and install from other sources. But in my case it insisted on replacing perfectly good libraries, claiming inconsistencies. When the upgrade was done, kaffeine, xine, and MPlayer, which worked reasonably well under 9.3 (with the exception of some --not all-- .wmv files) had been virtually eviscerated. None could play DVDs, or mpegs, or whatever else! None! I uninstalled 'xine-lib', reinstalled 'libxine1', uninstalled and then re-installed kaffeine, and made sure that 'w32codec' was installed, but the end result was the same. (It could be that some packages are 32-bit and some others 64.) At least, if the user has "politically incorrect" libraries and executables installed, the upgrade procedure should make an attempt to leave them alone!!!! Some libraries, such as 'libdvdcss' are not even available in the apt-get repositories and one has to go on a treasure hunt to find them --if he is able to at all. Hear me out, SuSE/Novell! I cannot spend all my waking hours and cut into my sleep hunting for dependencies to get my computer to do the things I want. I am seriously thinking about switching to Mandriva or some other distribution which has all the software I want ready to go. If this had been a friend's computer, most probably I WOULD have gone with Mandriva. (Where is the ease of use, advertised on the box my10.0 came in? Novell has been quoted in the newsmedia about its desire to pernetrate the desktop. How are they going to attract people away from Windows with problems like these? Sure, I am no guru, but I am no novice either.) --Why does 'lspci' report my video card as '01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go 32M] (rev a3)', while I know it is a *64MB* GeForce *440* Go? Now some snippets of the syslogs (obtained via 'tail -n 100 -f /var/sys/log/messages'): Internet connection hangs: Oct 25 00:04:53 presario gconfd (nonsense-7105): GConf server is not in use, shutting down. Oct 25 00:04:53 presario gconfd (nonsense-7105): Exiting Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 0c 0055 c07f media 10. Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: eth0: Tx queue start entry 5131 dirty entry 5127. Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 0 is 0008a047. Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 1 is 0008a063. Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 2 is 0008a047. Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 3 is 0008a047. (queue head) Oct 25 00:06:25 presario kernel: eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1 Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 0c 0055 c07f media 10. Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: eth0: Tx queue start entry 4 dirty entry 0. Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 0 is 0008a047. (queue head) Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 1 is 0008a047. Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 2 is 0008a047. Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: eth0: Tx descriptor 3 is 0008a047. Oct 25 00:06:37 presario kernel: eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1 [This pattern repeats itself.] Sound, DMA, interrupt, and timing problems (disregard the errors about skype segfaulting; it was happening under 9.3, too): Oct 25 00:14:17 presario kernel: hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x24 Oct 25 00:14:27 presario kernel: hda: DMA interrupt recovery Oct 25 00:14:27 presario kernel: hda: lost interrupt Oct 25 00:14:50 presario hp: unable to open /var/run/hpiod.port: No such file or directory: prnt/hpijs/hplip_api.c 75 Oct 25 00:15:23 presario kernel: hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x24 Oct 25 00:15:33 presario kernel: hda: DMA interrupt recovery Oct 25 00:15:33 presario kernel: hda: lost interrupt Oct 25 00:17:04 presario kernel: Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed. Oct 25 00:20:40 presario kernel: ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:2126: playback write error (DMA or IRQ trouble?) Oct 25 00:20:50 presario kernel: ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:2429: capture read error (DMA or IRQ trouble?) Oct 25 00:20:59 presario kernel: skype[6459]: segfault at 0000000057318920 rip 0000000057318920 rsp 00000000567e742c error 14 Oct 25 00:21:09 presario kernel: ALSA sound/core/pcm_native.c:1451: playback drain error (DMA or IRQ trouble?) Oct 25 00:21:15 presario su: (to root) nonsense on /dev/pts/1 Oct 25 00:21:42 presario kernel: ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:2126: playback write error (DMA or IRQ trouble?) Oct 25 00:21:52 presario kernel: ALSA sound/core/pcm_lib.c:2126: playback write error (DMA or IRQ trouble?) Oct 25 00:21:58 presario kernel: skype[6508]: segfault at 00000000572f1920 rip 00000000572f1920 rsp 00000000567e742c error 14 Oct 25 00:22:08 presario kernel: ALSA sound/core/pcm_native.c:1451: playback drain error (DMA or IRQ trouble?) presario:~ # Here is output of 'vmstat 5'; I am used to seeing *five* times as many interrupts under the same conditions (idling system): procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 0 32140 150092 360188 0 0 109 31 300 377 7 1 88 4 0 0 0 32156 150100 360188 0 0 0 16 255 284 0 0 100 0 0 0 0 32156 150100 360188 0 0 0 6 253 276 0 0 100 0 CF
Constantine 'Gus' Fantanas <fantanas@innocent.com> writes:
Hello everybody.
Today (errrrrr, yesterday, since it is now well past midnight and I am still pulling my hair off!), UPS brought me 10.0. With eager anticipation I started upgrading 9.3 to 10.0 on my Presario 3240 laptop (2.2 GHz AMD64 based, nVidia chipset, nVidia GeForce4 440, Go with 64MB dedicated video memory). Now I regret it ever doing this upgrade.
Interesting, I haven't heard about such problems and I'm running 10.0 on all my AMD64 machines without problems.
Below I describe some of the many problems I am facing after the upgrade and then provide what I think are pertinent syslogs.
--What happened to alsaplayer? It seems it has disappeared, even from the repositories!
--Often the cursor does not "grab" when it is supposed to (left-clicking on sliders or window frames for resizing or when attempting to "block" text to be pasted by left-clicking and dragging --I use KDE).
If you have any problems that are reproduceable, please file them in our bugzilla, for details check: http://www.opensuse.org/Submit_a_bug
--The internet connection unexpectedly freezes after about 10 minutes of uptime (it did not do it just before the upgrade and after the upgrade I tested it with a 32-bit system; the ethernet cable and the cable modem seem to work fine with the 32-bit system --running 32-bit SuSE 9.3). This happens even if there is virtually no internet activity. See the pertinent syslogs below. Could this be a kernel problem? 'uname -r' responds '2.6.13-15-default', the stock SuSE kernel.
This looks like a kernel problem of the ethernet driver.
--Shutdown takes forever (maybe over a minute) to commence.
This should be only at the first time.
--Lost ticks are reported in the syslogs, even booting with the 'no_timer_check' kernel directive. (And no, I need ACPI because this is a laptop!) See the pertinent syslogs below.
--DMA and IRQ errors also get registered in the syslogs, as you can see below.
--The upgrade trashed all my "politically incorrect" media players! (I remember that before SuSE was aquired by Novel, it offered, on the
An update removes SUSE Linux packages that are not on the media anymore - this is the default for all cases. The details of the package selection shows this. Leaving some of the libraries might give you a working program either.
installation CD/DVD, rpms for hard-to-install media players. Those were the days!) with some effort, I can tolerate "politically correct" libraries, such as 'xine-lib', if I know what I have to delete and install from other sources. But in my case it insisted on replacing perfectly good libraries, claiming inconsistencies. When the upgrade was done, kaffeine, xine, and MPlayer, which worked reasonably well under 9.3 (with the exception of some --not all-- .wmv files) had been virtually eviscerated. None could play DVDs, or mpegs, or whatever else! None! I uninstalled 'xine-lib', reinstalled 'libxine1', uninstalled and then re-installed kaffeine, and made sure that 'w32codec' was installed, but the end result was the same. (It could be that some packages are 32-bit and some others 64.) At least, if the user has "politically incorrect" libraries and executables installed, the upgrade procedure should make an attempt to leave them alone!!!! Some libraries, such as 'libdvdcss' are not even available in the apt-get repositories and one has to go on a treasure hunt to find them --if he is able to at all. Hear me out, SuSE/Novell! I cannot spend all my waking hours and cut into my sleep hunting for dependencies to get my computer to do the things I want. I am seriously thinking about switching to Mandriva or some other distribution which has all the software I want ready to go. If this had been a friend's computer, most probably I WOULD have gone with Mandriva. (Where is the ease of use, advertised on the box my10.0 came in? Novell has been quoted in the newsmedia about its desire to pernetrate the desktop. How are they going to attract people away from Windows with problems like these? Sure, I am no guru, but I am no novice either.)
--Why does 'lspci' report my video card as '01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go 32M] (rev a3)', while I know it is a *64MB* GeForce *440* Go?
No idea, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
I would like to thank everybody who, publicly and privately, tried to help me with my problems. I am making headway. I will describe where I stand regarding the problems detailed below because others may benefit from my solutions: The problem(s) with the network card and stray IRQ and DMA errors have (has?) been fixed! Somebody with a UK mail address privately suggested a visit to the nVidia site and installation of the most current nForce chipset drivers, which I did. Wandering around in the nVidia web site, I saw a susggestion to use the kernel directive 'acpi_skip_timer_override'. I incorporated that in my boot options. The nVidia site mentioned that the new nForce drivers (for the chipset other than the video card) are needed to correct the known problem of the ethernet port freezing when some malformed packets are encountered. After these changes, the ethernet port no longer hangs and the random --but frequent-- IRQ and DMA errors I was getting vanished! Furthermore, I don't think I get any warnings about lost ticks any more; if I do, they must be rare (and my clock is fine, too; these laptops had problems with fast or slow clock in the past, but the newer, post 2.6.10, kernels seem to have fixed that). I am not sure whether the lockup of the ethernet port, the DMA errors, the IRQ errors, and the warnings about lost ticks had a common cause or not and I am not sure whether the updated nForce drivers or the 'acpi_skip_timer_override' fixed anything (dumb idea to implement both simultaneously, but I was pressed for time). I was able to coax Amarok to play. Before, with the gstreamer engine, it was going through the playlist very quickly, generating no sound and spending less than a second per song (all this despite registering the gstreamer plugins, running 'gst-register' as root). I selected the xine engine with alsa output. At least I can now play something! This is the good part. I still have the problems with the cursors, as described below, but I found out that if I click two or more times in rapid succession the cursor usually 'grabs" what it is supposed to. Also, Realplayer (stock rpm from SuSE) appears for a split second after issuing 'realplay <file name>' and then vanishes (the very same file played fine under 9.3). Same behavior with MPlayer. I unistalled MPlayer and tried to re-install it. I get dependency errors (even when I try to install it via apt-get!) for software which 'rpm -q' indicates they are installed. I begin to suspect that some components are 64-bits and some others 32 bits. Firefox, which I think is still packaged by SuSE as 32 bits, cannot play Java, which is installed (it does not even show the Java applet window), but konqueror can. I think my Java is 64 bit. If my suspicion of intermixed 64- and 32-bit dependencies is true, then I probably have a royal mess to clean up! Allain Black suggested that I should have marked the media players so that YAST did not touch them during the distribution upgrade. I don't hink it was that easy because YAST complained about dependencies. (I vaguely remember I faced similar issues upgrading from 9.2 to 9.3 and I decided to do a clean install of 9.3.) And yes, Andreas, I will file bug reports for the benefit of everybody, but first I think I have to make sure I am dealing with bugs and not wrong settings. One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that 'iptables' gives me errors like this: iptables v1.3.3: can't initialize iptables table `nat': Bad file descriptor Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded. iptables v1.3.3: can't initialize iptables table `filter': Bad file descriptor Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded. ...[Repeated many times, probalby depending on how many times a script invokes 'iptables'.] This occurred "right out of the box" after I did the upgrade, but it also occurs when I run my own firewalling script. I recompiled the kernel (using the stock SuSE 2.6.13-15 source), but I still get the same error. I gave the new kernel a different name, so that I can make sure 'iptables' came from the same source tree. Again, many thanks to Andreas Jaeger, et al., for their help. I hope the solutions I presented here help somebody else. CF Andreas Jaeger wrote:
Constantine 'Gus' Fantanas <fantanas@innocent.com> writes:
Hello everybody.
Today (errrrrr, yesterday, since it is now well past midnight and I am still pulling my hair off!), UPS brought me 10.0. With eager anticipation I started upgrading 9.3 to 10.0 on my Presario 3240 laptop (2.2 GHz AMD64 based, nVidia chipset, nVidia GeForce4 440, Go with 64MB dedicated video memory). Now I regret it ever doing this upgrade.
Interesting, I haven't heard about such problems and I'm running 10.0 on all my AMD64 machines without problems.
Below I describe some of the many problems I am facing after the upgrade and then provide what I think are pertinent syslogs.
--What happened to alsaplayer? It seems it has disappeared, even from the repositories!
--Often the cursor does not "grab" when it is supposed to (left-clicking on sliders or window frames for resizing or when attempting to "block" text to be pasted by left-clicking and dragging --I use KDE).
If you have any problems that are reproduceable, please file them in our bugzilla, for details check: http://www.opensuse.org/Submit_a_bug
--The internet connection unexpectedly freezes after about 10 minutes of uptime (it did not do it just before the upgrade and after the upgrade I tested it with a 32-bit system; the ethernet cable and the cable modem seem to work fine with the 32-bit system --running 32-bit SuSE 9.3). This happens even if there is virtually no internet activity. See the pertinent syslogs below. Could this be a kernel problem? 'uname -r' responds '2.6.13-15-default', the stock SuSE kernel.
This looks like a kernel problem of the ethernet driver.
--Shutdown takes forever (maybe over a minute) to commence.
This should be only at the first time.
--Lost ticks are reported in the syslogs, even booting with the 'no_timer_check' kernel directive. (And no, I need ACPI because this is a laptop!) See the pertinent syslogs below.
--DMA and IRQ errors also get registered in the syslogs, as you can see below.
--The upgrade trashed all my "politically incorrect" media players! (I remember that before SuSE was aquired by Novel, it offered, on the
An update removes SUSE Linux packages that are not on the media anymore - this is the default for all cases. The details of the package selection shows this. Leaving some of the libraries might give you a working program either.
installation CD/DVD, rpms for hard-to-install media players. Those were the days!) with some effort, I can tolerate "politically correct" libraries, such as 'xine-lib', if I know what I have to delete and install from other sources. But in my case it insisted on replacing perfectly good libraries, claiming inconsistencies. When the upgrade was done, kaffeine, xine, and MPlayer, which worked reasonably well under 9.3 (with the exception of some --not all-- .wmv files) had been virtually eviscerated. None could play DVDs, or mpegs, or whatever else! None! I uninstalled 'xine-lib', reinstalled 'libxine1', uninstalled and then re-installed kaffeine, and made sure that 'w32codec' was installed, but the end result was the same. (It could be that some packages are 32-bit and some others 64.) At least, if the user has "politically incorrect" libraries and executables installed, the upgrade procedure should make an attempt to leave them alone!!!! Some libraries, such as 'libdvdcss' are not even available in the apt-get repositories and one has to go on a treasure hunt to find them --if he is able to at all. Hear me out, SuSE/Novell! I cannot spend all my waking hours and cut into my sleep hunting for dependencies to get my computer to do the things I want. I am seriously thinking about switching to Mandriva or some other distribution which has all the software I want ready to go. If this had been a friend's computer, most probably I WOULD have gone with Mandriva. (Where is the ease of use, advertised on the box my10.0 came in? Novell has been quoted in the newsmedia about its desire to pernetrate the desktop. How are they going to attract people away from Windows with problems like these? Sure, I am no guru, but I am no novice either.)
--Why does 'lspci' report my video card as '01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go 32M] (rev a3)', while I know it is a *64MB* GeForce *440* Go?
No idea,
Andreas
participants (2)
-
Andreas Jaeger -
Constantine 'Gus' Fantanas