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613459
Linux USB Problems on Dimension E521 AMD 64 X2
Hi,
Anyone else try running Linux (in my case Ubuntu 6.06) on the E521 with the AMD 64 X2 processor? I am having a problem when using xorg where my USB devices, more often my mouse, but my keyboard has had the problem as well stops working. It is almost like the interrupts start getting masked, but it isn't that. Because when the mouse stops working I am usually able to still use the keyboard.
It happens after a while, and usually in times of heavy use. I guess really instead of heavy I would say normal. But it has never happened that it will be working and then I let it lay idle for a while and then reach for it again and it be frozen.
This started happening under the amd64 version of Ubuntu but I have tried several different versions by now and the problem continues to happen.
As far as troubleshooting it has been a real pain. There is never a message in the kernel log or shown by running dmesg. Actually once or twice I have seen the irq status -71 received, but I am pretty sure that is not the cause, becuase it has only happened about twice out of maybe 40 occurances. And there is no message in the Xorg log either.
I have tried the default amd64-generic kernel the latest amd64-generic, the latest amd64-k8 kernel (I think 2.6.15-27.48) I have tried running the i386 uniprocessor kernel and the latest k7-smp kernel. All of them have the same problem.
In an effort to get to the bottom of it I have re-compiled the kernel according to the directions here: http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation_Dapper and turned on debugfs and collected data, but there doesn't seem to be anything of interest. It seems I get hundreds of thousands of lines of -115 status (Which I believe is the controller just telling the device that yeah, I hear ya and I am going to do something EINPROGRESS) and then nothing. The mouse appears to continue to function at least the circuit which senses movement and turns the LED into bright mode. And under Windows I have had no problems at all.
The only solution that always works is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it, which grabs a new device file /dev/input/event7 and probably does some other magic registers with the USB controller, and a bunch of other stuff and then the mouse starts working again.
The only other consistent problem I have noted is the IOAPIC stuff complains about a bug, and sometimes it won't boot and panics, other times it figures out a way to get by and does so. Because of this I have tried booting with noapic and other than changing the way /proc/interrupts looks there seems to be no change in the problem. Eventually under usage the mouse stops responding entirely. Even looking at cat /dev/input/mice there is nothing getting there.
I have upgraded the BIOS to 1.0.3 that had no effect. And also turned off the Cool and Quiet support in the bios.
Any thoughts, recommendations of how to proceed, or any other suggestions are appreciated.
Thank you,
Kevin
Anyone else try running Linux (in my case Ubuntu 6.06) on the E521 with the AMD 64 X2 processor? I am having a problem when using xorg where my USB devices, more often my mouse, but my keyboard has had the problem as well stops working. It is almost like the interrupts start getting masked, but it isn't that. Because when the mouse stops working I am usually able to still use the keyboard.
It happens after a while, and usually in times of heavy use. I guess really instead of heavy I would say normal. But it has never happened that it will be working and then I let it lay idle for a while and then reach for it again and it be frozen.
This started happening under the amd64 version of Ubuntu but I have tried several different versions by now and the problem continues to happen.
As far as troubleshooting it has been a real pain. There is never a message in the kernel log or shown by running dmesg. Actually once or twice I have seen the irq status -71 received, but I am pretty sure that is not the cause, becuase it has only happened about twice out of maybe 40 occurances. And there is no message in the Xorg log either.
I have tried the default amd64-generic kernel the latest amd64-generic, the latest amd64-k8 kernel (I think 2.6.15-27.48) I have tried running the i386 uniprocessor kernel and the latest k7-smp kernel. All of them have the same problem.
In an effort to get to the bottom of it I have re-compiled the kernel according to the directions here: http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation_Dapper and turned on debugfs and collected data, but there doesn't seem to be anything of interest. It seems I get hundreds of thousands of lines of -115 status (Which I believe is the controller just telling the device that yeah, I hear ya and I am going to do something EINPROGRESS) and then nothing. The mouse appears to continue to function at least the circuit which senses movement and turns the LED into bright mode. And under Windows I have had no problems at all.
The only solution that always works is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it, which grabs a new device file /dev/input/event7 and probably does some other magic registers with the USB controller, and a bunch of other stuff and then the mouse starts working again.
The only other consistent problem I have noted is the IOAPIC stuff complains about a bug, and sometimes it won't boot and panics, other times it figures out a way to get by and does so. Because of this I have tried booting with noapic and other than changing the way /proc/interrupts looks there seems to be no change in the problem. Eventually under usage the mouse stops responding entirely. Even looking at cat /dev/input/mice there is nothing getting there.
I have upgraded the BIOS to 1.0.3 that had no effect. And also turned off the Cool and Quiet support in the bios.
Any thoughts, recommendations of how to proceed, or any other suggestions are appreciated.
Thank you,
Kevin
Vinco
13 Posts
0
October 30th, 2006 03:00
I just plugged the mouse into the hub on the back of the multimedia keyboard and now it works fine in Edgy and Knoppix 5.0.1. But now the keyboard sometimes gets stuck repeating keys.
jrminter
10 Posts
0
October 30th, 2006 11:00
I REALLY hope Dell starts to take notice. This is getting around on the forums for most of the large distributions and can't be good for sales of these boxes. There was a LOT of interest in these as Linux boxes...
Qujo
7 Posts
0
October 30th, 2006 11:00
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/e510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
jbquenot
4 Posts
0
October 30th, 2006 18:00
I've got the exact same problem on FreeBSD. Details can be found at http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-usb/2006-October/002647.html
With a little help from Dell I'm sure this very annoying issue will be resolved in a timely manner.
Lobotomik
20 Posts
0
October 30th, 2006 22:00
thermostat
7 Posts
0
November 3rd, 2006 13:00
I habe experienced the same problems on a E521 running an Athlon X2 both with SUSE 10.1 and Fedora Core 5. Quite often my mouse hangs, and a few times also my keyboard happened not to react any more. To get them working again, I have to unplug them or to reload the ohci driver (if only the mouse hangs):
rmmod ohci_hcd; modprobe ohci_hcd
Furthermore, if the mouse hangs, in /dev/input/mice there isn't any more information comming until I get it working again, so the problem can't have anything to do with Xorg, but rather it is in or below the kernel level. But as there are also the same problems with FreeBSD, as jbquenot has reported, I also think that the problem must be related to the BIOS or the hardware level. At least, I have to turn off either APIC with the 'noapic' option or ACPI IRQ-routing with 'acpi=noirq' because otherwise the system won't even boot.
thermostat
7 Posts
0
November 4th, 2006 18:00
Recently I have built the D-Link DWL-G520 wlan PCI-device into my computer. It has an Atheros chipset and therefore I use the madwifi driver and WPA-PSK encryption with wpa_supplicant.
Under Linux it sometimes just loses the connection to the access point. After reloading the kernel modules I haven't succeded reestablishing the connection yet, however, after booting I can set up the wlan interface again.
Has anyone experienced problems with devices other than usb?
My_spece
5 Posts
0
November 6th, 2006 19:00
I use Gentoo, and also I have loads of problems turning off the pc. I had this mouse problem during the past 3-4 weeks, but thought it was kernel issue.
jbquenot
4 Posts
0
November 7th, 2006 01:00
Any ideas?
PS: Of course if a BIOS update that fixes the problem could be made available, product return would not be needed.
Lobotomik
20 Posts
0
November 7th, 2006 05:00
Lobotomik
20 Posts
0
November 7th, 2006 05:00
Whether the problem is in the E521 BIOS or whether it is in the Linux kernel code, what Dell should do is PAY SOMEONE TO FIX IT. It looks as an extremely simple problem to fix for somebody with the right kernel development experience.
We have to demand that Dell fixes the problem, because it is an EVIDENT problem that happens with a VERY IMPORTANT SET OF SOFTWARE PROGRAMS (all of Linux GUI apps), because they have been so INCOMPETENT TO LET SLIP BY QA, and because they have FOOLED US into buying this devices NOT TELLING US THAT LINUX DOES NOT RUN, even when in the States they market this computer without an OS as a platform whereupon to run Linux.
My_spece
5 Posts
0
November 7th, 2006 13:00
But 2 points:
First, What if I need my PCI slot for other cards, say sound card.
Secondly, why should I pay extra, when there is a fault (so far seems to be a hardware problem, otherwise can be proven by DELL)in a brand new product.
jfromer
1 Message
0
November 7th, 2006 13:00
If I use the vesa driver, then the mouse works, but if I'm using the nvidia supplied driver then the mouse doesn't work at all.
This is under Fedora Core 5, kernel 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5smp with the following nvidia driver:
kmod-nvidia-smp-1.0.8774-1.2.6.18_1.2200.fc5
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-1.0.8774-1.lvn5
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-devel-1.0.8774-1.lvn5
This is wierd...
From my Xorg.0.log:
--- Xorg.0.log.nv 2006-11-07 10:54:23.000000000 +0100
+++ Xorg.0.log.vesa 2006-11-07 10:55:34.000000000 +0100
[...snip..]
(**) Keyboard0: CustomKeycodes disabled
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Keyboard0" (type: KEYBOARD)
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Mouse0" (type: MOUSE)
-(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "NVIDIA Event Handler" (type: Other)
(--) Mouse0: PnP-detected protocol: "ExplorerPS/2"
(II) Mouse0: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
+(II) Mouse0: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
Hmm, does anyone know what a "NVIDIA Event Handler" is?
Can anyone confirm that you can get a functioning mouse by using the vesa driver ?
Message Edited by jfromer on 11-07-2006 09:40 AM
Qujo
7 Posts
0
November 7th, 2006 13:00
thermostat
7 Posts
0
November 7th, 2006 15:00
Just for confirmation I want to ask explicitly: Do this problems appear also on the n-Series, or have all of you bought the standard version shipped with Windows?
EDIT: @jfromer: No, unfortunately my mouse works neither on SUSE nor on FC properly, independent of the graphics driver.
Message Edited by thermostat on 11-07-2006 11:54 AM