Clocksource tsc unstable

sampoo55 · 03-12-2009, 07:59 AM

Hi,

I'm running Debian Lenny stable on an AMD64 processor (Athlon X2) on an Asus M2A-VM motherboard. We use the machine as a server for our website. We had a lot of instability issues (every few days the kernel locked up in a hard panic which required a manual reset of the system) before the upgrade to Lenny. I already ran memtest86+ for 48 hours without any error so i guess the memory isn't corrupt.

Since I installed lenny, i'm getting a new error in the dmesg output:
[ 2494.398691] Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = 62507982 ns)

after it has run for about half an hour. It keeps running but it locks up again after a week or two, and a lot of kernel Oops'es (which can be seen in the kernel.log file). The clocksource message is reproducible every half an hour after boot, reason unknown. I have been looking up a lot of information and forums on this matter but i can't seem to find what's wrong. In the kernel.log file, when an Oops occurs, there is an error for one specific Perl script that renders a page on the website, something i haven't seen before in the logs.

What I have attempted so far:
- installed the latest BIOS version
- Linux version 2.6.26-1-amd64 (Debian 2.6.26-13) (waldi@debian.org) (gcc version 4.1.3 20080704 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-24)) #1 SMP Sat Jan 10 17:57:00 UTC 2009
-

Code:

cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource0/available_clocksource
hpet acpi_pm jiffies tsc

-

Code:

cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource0/current_clocksource
hpet

This is the same before AND after the clocksource message.
- i haven't tried enabling or disabling kernel boot options yet.

Can someone give me any help on this?
Thanks!

mad4linux · 07-25-2009, 09:46 AM

Hi

Try adding the following option to your kernel line in the boot loader:

clocksource=hpet

The message "tsc unstable" still appears on boot up. But the boot process doesn't hang any more after the message.

In more detail, if you use grub:

Edit /boot/grub menu.lst

find the line

## ## End default Options ## ##
Just after this line, the first boot option should appear.

On the line starting with kernel, add clocksource=acpi_pm at the end.
Looks like this on my system:

Code:

title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-amd64
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-amd64 root=/dev/mapper/lvmgruppe-root ro clocksource=hpet
initrd          /initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64