[SOLVED] Linux is noisy, Solaris 10 is silent. A weird problem.

TL_CLD · 07-09-2010, 04:50 PM

Hey all,

I've bought myself a new workstation: A Sun Ultra 27.

It's a great machine, and I'm very happy with it, except for one odd thing: It emits a very loud high pitch sound during network transfers and during various other tasks that involves moving data around at breakneck speed.

At first I thought it was a hardware issue, so I switched the nic, but that didn't help. I tried a few different brands, to no avail. The noise remained.

Then Sun swapped the motherboard and the PSU, but still the noise remained.

I've also switched the harddrives, to no avail. I've tried various brands of regular disks, and I've tried two different SSD's.

I've also tried a bunch of different distros, but that didn't help either.

Then I tried Solaris 10, and voila! The noise went away. The machine is perfectly quiet.

But I'm not really interested in running Solaris 10, as it is completely unknown to me. I'd much rather run Slackware.

So my question to you guys is: How do I go about changing drivers for this computer?

As an example: The e1000e driver for the nic. The Slackware 13.1 x86_64 driver for this nic is at version 1.0.2-k2, but the latest official driver from Intel is 1.2.8.

Now if I download the driver from Intel, all I get is some source that fails at compiling:

Quote:

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.33.4/build SUBDIRS=/home/thomas/e1000e-1.2.8/src modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.33.4'
CC [M] /home/thomas/e1000e-1.2.8/src/netdev.o
/home/thomas/e1000e-1.2.8/src/netdev.c: In function 'e1000_runtime_resume':
/home/thomas/e1000e-1.2.8/src/netdev.c:6081: error: 'struct dev_pm_info' has no member named 'runtime_auto'
make[2]: *** [/home/thomas/e1000e-1.2.8/src/netdev.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/thomas/e1000e-1.2.8/src] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.33.4'
make: *** [default] Error 2

And how about the other hardware components? I suspect there's some chipset driver also, but I'm not really certain how to update those, or even where to find them.

lspci for the computer looks like this:

Quote:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub to ESI Port (rev 13)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 13)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 13)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev 13)
00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management Registers (rev 13)
00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch Pad Registers (rev 13)
00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status and RAS Registers (rev 13)
00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers (rev 13)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82567LM-2 Gigabit Network Connection
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Controller
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SATA AHCI Controller
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0ca3 (rev a2)
03:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
04:04.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

Should I perhaps just wait for a newer kernel and hope the problem gets fixed by that?

Sun is also working on solving the problem, but I fear they'll just give up and tell me to run Solaris.

Any and all suggestions are more than welcome, as the noise is driving both me and my wife insane.

lucmove · 07-09-2010, 05:10 PM

Sorry for intruding in your topic, I don't have any answers, just actually a question, I am genuinely curious:

Aren't those Sun machines extremely expensive? What's the point of buying one if you are not going to run Solaris on it? Why not use a generic, much cheaper machine if you just want to run Linux? What was your motivation?

dugan · 07-09-2010, 05:28 PM

It's probably singing capacitors. Rebuild the kernel to use a frequency of less than 1000hz.

TL_CLD · 07-10-2010, 01:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucmove

Sorry for intruding in your topic, I don't have any answers, just actually a question, I am genuinely curious:

Aren't those Sun machines extremely expensive? What's the point of buying one if you are not going to run Solaris on it? Why not use a generic, much cheaper machine if you just want to run Linux? What was your motivation?

I got a good deal on it, because I bought a couple of Sun servers at the same time. So the price was only marginally higher than "a generic machine".

And it's a great piece of equipment. I'm very pleased with it, except for the high pitch noise.

TL_CLD · 07-10-2010, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

It's probably singing capacitors. Rebuild the kernel to use a frequency of less than 1000hz.

Hey dugan,

I've tried that, and it didn't change a thing. The noise remains, no matter the frequency.

TL_CLD · 07-10-2010, 02:42 AM

I'm happy to report that the 2.6.34.1 kernel all but entirely fix the issue. The noise is still there but it is much weaker and the tone is not as high pitched.

I've no clue what specific changes between 2.6.33.4 and 2.6.34.1 are the cause of the fix - I'm just very happy that the noise is gone.

delta_waves · 07-10-2010, 03:09 AM

Have you considered Nexenta? It uses the Solaris kernel with the GNU/Linux userland that you're accustomed to. It might provide you with the best of both worlds.

TL_CLD · 07-10-2010, 03:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by delta_waves

Have you considered Nexenta? It uses the Solaris kernel with the GNU/Linux userland that you're accustomed to. It might provide you with the best of both worlds.

I love Slackware, and I'm getting too old to learn new tricks.

And with btrfs around the corner, ZFS is no longer the king of file systems. I have messed around with Opensolaris and ZFS, and it is awesome.

But thanks for the suggestion.

syg00 · 07-10-2010, 04:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TL_CLD

... and I'm getting too old to learn new tricks.

And with btrfs around the corner, ZFS is no longer the king of file systems. I have messed around with Opensolaris and ZFS, and it is awesome.

This is pretty close to my attitude as well. I keep looking at OpenSolaris for principally DTrace and ZFS, but it's so much effort to do what I normally know what to do, it's all too hard.

I will say that btrfs has a long way still to go. I always run absolutely the latest kernel (even -mm), and btrfs is still broken. Not complaining (given the development resource disparity), but it ain't up to the task yet.

TL_CLD · 07-10-2010, 04:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

I will say that btrfs has a long way still to go. I always run absolutely the latest kernel (even -mm), and btrfs is still broken. Not complaining (given the development resource disparity), but it ain't up to the task yet.

You are right about that, but there are some pretty big players out there pushing for btrfs, so I'm sure it'll get there.

And I can't say I'm in any kind of hurry. ext4 is serving me quite well.