Hey

OK, nforce2 based GA 7N400 Pro2 board here. This problem existed under 2.6.7 as well

If i compile 2.6.8.1 with built in sound driver via alsa (1.0.5 ?) or as a module and then use ALSA 1.0.6 the result is roughly the same:

Lockups.

I originally suspected the NVIDIA driver, but that wasn't it, because i happens sometimes before i even install the driver. I found that sound didn't work (quite by accident) and first thing i was told was libao was broken so i updated to 0.8.5 and that error went, but sound didn't come in it's absence. Now when i run mpg123 i get this error message:

ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:578snd_pcm_hw_drain) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_DRAIN failed: Input/output error

Now, call me crazy, but i don't think this is a sound problem because:
When i compiled the NVIDIA module last, it froze, no sound used any which way.

The problem initially (2.6.7) manifested itself quite randomly, run 6hours, no crash, next reboot (i turn this system off when i don't use it, it's noisy) crashes after 2 hours, next reboot 30 min, next nothing, next 5 min ... you get the pic

under 2.6.8.1 it happens far more agressively, originally i noticed it'd do it during launching UT2K4 and suspected a bug in that, or NVIDIA, however i later observed it during KDE startup, UT2K3 startup, and in init 3 during nvidia module building (i prolly mentioned this twice already).

Anyway, that got me thinking, HDD access + random = crash, which makes me (now) think along the lines of a wrong kernel option compiled in (which i did in the 2.6.1 days once), but i've triple checked the config three times now (more often in fact) and i still can't find any mistakes in what i did (did not do). In short i'm baffled.

Any suggestions welcome.

This is Slackware 10.0 with updates for KDE (3.3) and libao (0.8.5) though i appear to have 0.8.3 and 0.8.4 also installed (i'll try nuking those). asside from that i have quite a few other packages installed, but they are not root related (as far as i can tell) we are talking LyX, OpenOffice, Gaim etc. in other words stuff that doesn't run unless told to.

Again, any suggestion welcome.

The nforce2 chipset contains a few bugs that affect ACPI and APIC. Add "noapic" and "acpi=off" to your kernel parameters and you should be fine.

If you use Lilo, add this to your /etc/lilo.conf and then rerun /sbin/lilo:If you use Grub, just add "noapic acpi=off" (remove the quotes) to the end of the line that begins with "kernel" in your grub.conf/menu.lst.


Håkan

hmm ... i read this before and disabled apic support ... i'll give it a shot though


Ta

aight that fixed it nicely ... not sure why but i'll look into it.

Tell me though, if one did not ask here, where would one find out about this particular append option?

The file kernel-parameters.txt in the Documentation subdirectory of the kernel source tree contains most of these options. Some new experimental options are missing in that file but as soon as they are labelled non-experimental they are supposed to show up there.


Håkan