Greetings!


I purchased a Medion 41700 laptop and installed Linux on it. Apart from some minor problems, it seemed to work fine until I started experiencing a strange problem about which I'm unable to find any information on the web or forums.

Under heavy cpu/hdd load (don't know what exactly triggers it) the system starts to lag on user input by keyboard and mouse. For example when I enter a command and press ENTER, I don't see the last few chars I typed and the command won't get executed until I hit some more keys. This happens every time I work under Linux but never when I use Windows. And it gets worse over time, sometimes it gets to the point where the system won't act on any input at all, rendering it unusable.

I tried a number of things, used different kernel versions (2.4 and 2.6 branch), optimized them for different cpu architectures (from 386 to PentiumIV), with and without framebuffer/acpi and finally tried all the chipsets in the kernel configuration.

I'm starting to loose hope that Linux will run on this machine.

Some system specs:
- CPU: Celeron 2.6GHz
- Chipset: ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP

I don't know what other information might be relevant so I leave it at that because I don't want to make this a huge post. Of course I can give out lspci, dmesg and any other output that you think might be of importance.

One more thing: at boot time it says something about hdd DMA being disabled and when I try hdparm -X udma5 -d 1, it tells me that this operation is not permitted on this device although I enabled all relevant DMA options in the kernel config. Maybe this might have something to do with it...


I beg anyone who might have some hint: Please help me make this otherwise fine laptop a Linux-only box. I'm really out of clues and am starting to get desperate.

It is due to the advanced synaptics touch pad (Google) input device (touch pad), the development is still in progress but it seems to be slightly buggy. SuSE 9.1 (kernel 2.6.4) tries to exploit enhanced features of this device (and it ruins all other inputs), but I had best experience using it in IMPS/2 mode. What I did was to select no mouse during install (using the keyboard)

I had succes with using it as a simple ps/2 mouse, this requires that you put an upper limit on the mouse protocol, by adding 'psmouse.proto=imps' to your kernel (i.e. adding this line to the kernel options in your bootloader configuration) (see /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt)

After you do this, you can set up XFree86 and what ever configuration program you use, say, SaX2, it will at most see a IMPS/2 mouse, and that will work.

Good luck.

Jarl

Thanks for your reply!


I see, that may be the problem!

But the strange thing is that I was installing Gentoo on this laptop and had neither xfree nor gpm or any program/daemon running that uses mouse/touchpad input. Only console and keyboard.

Now I am a newbie when it comes to laptops, are you saying that the keyboard uses the same interface, chipset or something like that? If this is the case then this really might be the problem. I will do some research so that I won't have to bother with more stupid questions. =)


Thanks a lot again, I had almost lost hope!

Hi,
I read about your problem with the notebook and I wondered, how you were getting on, as I've bought the same machine. I run suse 9.1 on it and my main problem is that the keyboard is dead unless I press a button (like f2) while booting. So, it works fine, but it is not recognised automatically. Could this be the same issue with the touch pad? But even if I edit the bootloader (as suggested), the problem remains... any suggestions?

And then, as you are the only person I "know" running linux on this machine I wondered, how you got the modem to work and how you configured the radeon dual-head function..
a lot of questions, I know..
Anyway, greetings
Matthias

Greetings!


Well currently I don't have much time on my hands to play around with this problem and I need the notebook to work so I removed linux to try again in a few days or so. But I didn't give up yet!

I'm sorry but I can't help you with the modem or dual-head function yet because I didn't get that far. I thought it wouldn't make much sense for me to configure such things if I can't get the user input to work right.

But it's kind of interesting that you have a similar yet slightly different problem with your keyboard. Next time I try installing linux, I will try SuSE or an old copy of Debian and post the results here.

Also would you please tell me what kernel you are running with SuSE 9.1? Maybe I will try that version as well (the SuSE version, not the kernel.org one) and see if I get the same problem as you do.


Thanks for the feedback! =)

I see..
try suse 9.1. It works quite well with this laptop (apart from this keyboard issue) and I even got my girlfriend to change from windows to suse. My kernel is 2.6.4-54.5 default (the updated suse kernel).
Whenever you try again, ask me. I hope until then I'll have these issues sorted out..
Matthias

Hi

I didn't work to get the advanced features of the Radeon to work. But I believe you need to download the proprietary (non open source) free (as in gratis) driver developed by ATI, search their website.

With respect to the modem, I didn't work on that either, I connect through a LAN, even WirelessLan works with proprietary (USD 20) driverloader from Linuxant (The Prism54 driver needs some work). I have got the same modem to work on another laptop though without problems. I even think that SuSE supports it with a package. The modem is an intel 536EP, and a kernel module is needed, search the web, or even try YaST2 to search for '536'.

To Mattis75:
Regarding the keyboard hang, try to use 'acpi=off' as a boot option, does that work? How about the "failsafe" boot mode?

Jarl

THANKS for the hint with acpi=off. Indeed, my keyboard is working fine now. It seems like I have to wait for a newer kernel to have my powermanagement supported, right?
matthias

Hi

As SuSE states in their support forum, the kernel boot parameter "acpi_irq_balance"
should do the trick (at least for SuSE 9.1). I tried this on the "live-cd" version of the system and
it seemed to do the trick. ACPI kernel features thus don't have to be deactivated
completely.

It's me, the initiator of the thread.

Ok, I finally found some time to try and install Linux again on this laptop (gentoo stage1). This time on of the things I tried was switching Legacy USB Support off in the BIOS and that seemed to have solved my problem.

I know, this is a tip that is often stated in relation to keyboard/input problems with laptops and I should have tried it earlier. But in all the other threads I saw, people had problems with the keyboard not working at all and so I thought "this can't be the same problem" as my keyboard worked fine until these strange 'lag' symptoms came after some time.

I apologize for my negligence but maybe some other user(s) will read this and won't make the same mistake.

If you are completely desperate, try everything that could be remotely connected to your problem! It might - after all - be the solution!

gundelgauk wrote:
I completely agree, I just reinstalled SuSE 9.2 on the machine, and ran into the problem you describe, no input at all. I also solved the problem by disabling the USB Legacy support in the BIOS.

Jarl