[mythtv-users] Occasional hard freezes

[Michael T. Dean]

Ryan Steffes wrote:

>On 10/28/05, Julian Edwards <myth at julian-edwards.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Ryan Steffes wrote:
>>
>>>I thought I had finally gotten this fixed with the kernel option
>>>nolapic, but it happened to me again. I am experiencing hard lock ups
>>>that seem to be related to high data throughput, but aren't consistent
>>>enough for me to track down. When it freezes, only hitting the reset
>>>or power button fixes it.
>>>
>>>I have an MSI K7N2 Delta 2 motherboard with an AMD Barton 2500+ in
>>>it. It has a nforce northbridge. I am passing the kernel "acpi=no
>>>noapic nolapic". I'm running 2.6.11-6mdk. I have one PVR 150. I have
>>>two hard drives, running LVM to make one video share. I'm running
>>>ivtv 0.3.9
>>>
>>>What happens is a hard lock up. It generally happens when I'm
>>>exercising the ethernet hard.
>>>      
>>>
>>This exact same thing was happening to me too with my KT6 Delta.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>>Can anyone give any advice on where to go from here?
>>>      
>>>
>>Sure. The problem is almost certainly to do with interrupt sharing. In
>>my case it was a problem with the ACPI steering assigning too many
>>devices the same IRQ. I ended up fixing it by disabling unnecessary
>>onboard hardware (eg I don't need 8 USB controllers or onboard sound),
>>using acpi=off (is that different to your acpi=no ?) and re-positioning
>>
>According to proc/interrupts, there shouldn't be a sharing problem. However,
>I'm unsure if there is a difference between acpi=no and acpi=off. I'll try
>"off" and see if I can pound away on the NIC and the hard drive and see what
>happens.
>
vi /usr/src/linux-`uname -r`/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt

/acpi

        acpi=           [HW,ACPI] Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
                        Format: { force | off | ht | strict }
                        force -- enable ACPI if default was off
                        off -- disable ACPI if default was on
                        noirq -- do not use ACPI for IRQ routing
                        ht -- run only enough ACPI to enable Hyper Threading
                        strict --  Be less tolerant of platforms that 
are not
                                strictly ACPI specification compliant.

I think you were trying for "acpi=noirq noapic nolapic".  And, it 
wouldn't hurt to throw in a "pci=noacpi" for good measure.  Most of the 
'net gets these parameters wrong, though, so I realize you saw someone 
else recommend this...

Note, also, that "acpi=off" would give you the same IRQ-related results 
as "acpi=noirq" (and disable the rest of ACPI, also).

Mike