[linux-dvb] Re: DVB-T crashes Mandrake 9.1

[Philip Armstrong <phil@kantaka.co.uk>]

On Sat, May 03, 2003 at 10:31:10PM +0100, Bruno Prior wrote:
> As I understand it, linux should handle IRQ sharing. I have to say, I've 
> suspected linux's incompetence at IRQ sharing as the cause of God know's 
> how many problems, but I have been told previously that it shouldn't be a 
> problem to have more than one piece of hardware on the same IRQ. And to be 
> frank, if linux can't handle this, we might as well all stop bothering now.
> 
> I could try it in another slot, but if this is the solution, it may be the 
> final straw that puts me off linux forever.
> 
> Thanks for replying, but I'm going to hold off changing things in the hope 
> that someone has an alternative suggestion.

Linux is perfectly capable of supporting irq sharing. A cursory glance
at /proc/interrupts on my machine reveals that the interrupt for my
dvb nova-t card is shared with both my ethernet card and my wireless
ethernet card for a start.

However, it may be that for some reason your hardware isn't being
setup correctly in this case, or it may be a driver bug which shows up
only with shared interrupts -- failing to clear an irq after you've
handled it for instance works ok unless you're sharing the interrupt
in which case it'll cause lockups on the spot (iirc). Any of the
drivers which handle the hardware on the shared interrupt could be
responsible for this problem.

Also, you don't actually say which motherboard you have, but it seems
to have an awful lot of unrecognised hardware; I'd have a look on the
linux-kernel mailing list to see if there are any reports of problems
there. Oh, and Mandrake 9.1 is using some hacked up prerelease of the
2.4.21 kernel. I doubt it's been well tested on the kind of server
hardware you're using -- Mandrake are not known for their server-side
support afaik -- they seem to concentrate mostly on the end-user
gui experience.

One thing which did spring to mind after looking at your logs was that
you could try booting with noapic to turn off apic support; if it's
the interrupt routing which is being mishandled then turning off the
apic support might help.

cheers,

Phil

-- 
http://www.kantaka.co.uk/ .oOo. public key: http://www.kantaka.co.uk/gpg.txt



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