Hi!

I have installed Gentoo Linux on my Dell Inspiron 640m about 6 months ago. I had some trouble with the some hardware on this notebook but the dvd drive worked well. But for an unknown reason I have the following problem playing and writing CDs and DVDs for about a month (I'm not sure about the exact time when it began): If I play/burn DVD/CD my mouse and the whole system starts to hang and I get lost ticks messages, after the read/burn process my clock also doesn't show the correct time.
I'm not sure how to track the source of this problem, so could someone please help me and maybe tell me which settings or logs I should look at or post here?

I'm using kernel 2.6.21-gentoo-r1 for the moment, my kernel boot params are:
kernel /boot/kernel-2.6.21-gentoo-r1 root=/dev/sda8 vga=0x318 video=vesafb:mtrr:3,ywrap splash=silent,fadein,themeangerGirl quiet CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 fbcon=scrollback:128K clocksource=acpi_pm acpi_irq_balance nmi_watchdog=0 (I read the gentoo tutorial for my notebook and copied some of the parameters from there, so I'm not sure what some of them do, in case it is relevant).

Thanks in advance for your help!

Are you using the x86 architecture (not x86-64)? If so, did you compile a tickless kernel?

I'm using x86-64. Tickless kernel? It's new in 2.6.21, isn't it? No idea how to configure it, I'll have to google. But what's the reason for the malfunction? It worked perfectly for monthts and now it doesn't work any more. ????

Don’t bother… I don’t think it’s implemented on x86-64 kernels (as of 2.6.21 at least). That was just a probable guess of a new(ish) technology that may not have had all the kinks worked out.

As for your problem, I really have no idea what could be causing a loss of ticks. Perhaps you might try other timer sources. E.g., instead of “acpi_pm”, you might try “pit” (the default if no options are given), “tsc”, “pmtmr”, or “hpet” (NOTE: to use some of these, you may need to have support compiled in the kernel). In any case, diagnostics about your timesource might occur early on in the dmesg output.

I've tried to find an FAQ or a tutorial to safely change my clocksource but I wasn't really successful. Can anyone give me a link to such a page? I need to know which kernel modules I need to compile to use some of the clocksources from the previous post. I would also appreciate a link to a list of available kernel boot options (with descriptions). Thanks!

I would just use all the information from the kernel source tree. E.g., Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt .

OK, I've tried the hpet and tsc clocksources, as I saw in the kernel docs the pit timer is not available for x86-64 arch. The system didn't want to boot with the tsc clocksource but it booted with the hpet clocksource. But sadly it didn't help with my problem, it still begins to hang if I start reading/writing CDs/DVDs.
I also wanted to mention that I don't get any problems with this drive in Windoze. I've also tested reading/writing with an USB attached DVD drive and I also had no problems with it. There are only problems with the IDE attached one.