On Thursday 08 November 2001 10:47, Malte Christensen wrote:
Cliff Sarginson wrote:
On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 08:14:23AM -0500, zentara wrote:
Hi, I don't quite follow what the problem with APIC is; but I can tell you my experience with turning it off.
I compiled a kernel without it, and experienced all sorts of random lockups and error messages, such as "spurious interrupt on irq7".
I put it back into the kernel, and the problems stopped.
From the help for APIC in make menuconfig, " the local
APIC supports CPU-generated self-interrupts, (such as timers and performance counters) and the NMI watchdog which detects hard lockups.
I have a duron processor.
Mmm. I think the summary of all of this is:
- Some people have problems with APIC - Some people have problems without it - Some people find APM doesn't work with it - Some people found soft-halts didn't work with APIC and APM - Some people found soft-halts didn't work in any combination - Some people found it all worked fine in more recent kernels
So that's clear isn't it. And it's all the fault of the BIOS of course. Strange that the default kernel on installation comes with it on... Still if you don't mind your disks being reduced to a snail's pace you can always choose the fail-safe option.
Anyway, it is all explained in the SuSE Reference Manual on page..errm.. page...strange must be missing from my manual copy.
FWIW, I use nosmp disableapic noapic as my LILO boot args on a Dell Dimension 8100. Without all that garbage, SuSE won't even install (P4 1.4Ghz processor). At least 7.2 won't. I UPGRADED to 7.3, but am going to fdisk and start over on two machines tonight. SuSE 7.3 is a nightmare of instability and useless stuff that doesn't seem to work (KDE and WMware are good examples), and I'm going to rip it off of my machines and go back to 7.2. I do realize, of course, that some of my problems stem from the fact that I use a Compaq Armada laptop (I'll accept no flames. I have to use it). Alas, my machines are now as unstable as they were with Windows ME. At least with Windows ME I got to use all the fancy buttons on the keyboards ;-) Try to get BIOS updates for Linux from most major laptop suppliers. They usually go: 'Linux? Yeah, I heard of it, I thought Bill Gates owned the brand.'
Next time I won't be the first to install a new distribution.
Cheers,
Malte
I heard that folks were having problems with the 'upgrade' option. I knew that I would do a clean install later so I tried the upgrade option ("about everyting") and when it booted I went to root and tested out KDE. It seemed perfect. Expecting the best I logged out of root and into my user account. Total disaster. No menu options would work, save the logout option. I couldn't create a new desktop icon... none of the mimes worked. It was useless. With fear and trepidation I took the clean install route, reformatted my HDs and put ReiserFS on them, and then took the 'about everyting' options. The install was perfect! Everthing was recognized perfectly: the BJC-620 connected to the back of the Iomega Zip250 which was plugged into the LPT1:, the 4832 PlexStor CDRW, the monitor, the wheel mouse, the SBLive! card... For the past week this 1GHz Athlon with 512MB RAM and two 60GB drives has been humming along sweetly. :) My only disappointment so far is that Sword 1.5.2 won't compile, and neither will 1.5.1a, which compiled on this box when it was running 7.2. Something to play with :) I couldn't be more pleased. Some folks have done an upgrade and got excellent results. Some have done clean installs and failed. Too many variables. I'm amazed that any OS can install such a wide variety of boxes with so many different peripherals and BIOS chips. Jerry