Crash after crash, begging for help [Solved]

jpalan · Last edited by jpalan on Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:45 am; edited 3 times in total

Ok, a while I go I had a problem with my tv card, Hauppauge WinTV Go, which seems to have some problems with my VIA mother board which has Apollo MVP3 chipset.
As far as I know, bttv contains some quirks to avoid problems. Back then with Mandrake 8.0 I had no problems with the card and later with another distros when I had problems they were solved simply by giving bttv parameter triton1=1.

But now...
Tried triton1=1, doesn't help.
Tried vsfx=1, doesn't help.
Ide dma is off, doesn't help.
Disabling pci write buffer doesn't help.

I have also compiled the chipset support to kernel (2.6.10) and have loaded i2c-via and i2c-viapro without success and I have tried compiling kernel with and without ide dma support or irq sharing, but no.

I've also collected a number of advices from net, that suggest trying some of the following:
* setting latency timer to <=12
* setting pci master bus timeout from disabled to 001
But I have absolutely no idea how to do neither of those, at least I didn't found pci master bus timeout from bios.

I also thought, while going through lspci and dmesg, that perhaps changing irq's could help (I guess irqtune is the tool for this), but I really don't know much about the subject, what irq I can and should choose and how safe it is to change those, as I really don't want to kill my computer.

There must be some solution. It worked before and it worked back then with win98se so there pretty damn sure is a way to get it work now too.

For reference, my lspci and dmesg, just in case somebody figures out something:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 8:15 pm Post subject:

jpalan,

You could try the TV card in another slot. Not all PCI slots are created equal. Some have unshareable IRQs others don't. Also priority is allocated in slot order. See you motherboard manual for which end is PCI slot 1 (or try it at both ends).

jpalan · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 8:33 pm Post subject:

Thanks, it says:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 9:03 pm Post subject:

jpalan,

That shows that bttv is on its own on irq 10 and has generated 3 interrupts so far.

What CPU do you have and how good is the cooling now?
the Apollo MPV3 is a super socket 7 chipset for AMD K6-2s mostly.
Does the cooling still work?
An overheating CPU can produce the symptoms you report. It would be worth checking the CPU fan and removing the grot from the heatsink fins with a stiff brush.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

jpalan · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 6:27 am Post subject:

yes, I noticed that irq 10.
My cpu is K6-3 and and working fine.

I have oiled all the fans two times as I have made a complete dismantling, checking and cleaning for the machine, first time when one of the fans started making funny sound.

However, even though I have my doubts about the fans and I have plans to replace them plus putting a 4" or 5" fan to the front panel to push air in, I don't think it's a heat problem since the computer can be running day and night without any problems (not even when watching a movie, which puts cpu load to 67% or so, watching tv is pretty much 0%) and the problems occur only with the tv.

I have noticed, that the bttv seems to be particularly allergic to net programs so I thought that it could be some hardware conflict.

And no, there is no way I can put network card to another slot as all the pci slots are full and any other cards are higher and would cover the gpu fan totally.
All I can do is to change Hauppauge and SB 128PCI and see if that helps (as soon as I turn off the machine, I should boot with my new kernel configuration anyway).

jpalan · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:29 pm Post subject: Crash after crash [Solved]

Ok, the problem was just too simple and (unobvious) to me: enable ACPI from bios and compile ACPI support to kernel. So, there went the irq routing conflicts and all.

I also changed the tv card to another slot, but I guess that wasn't necessary in the first place.

jpalan · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 8:07 pm Post subject:

I'll take it back, situation is not solved, it crashed when changing to fullscreen while other programs (gtk-gnutella, irssi) were running.
dmesg | grep irq says:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 8:54 pm Post subject:

jpalan,

All that looks quite normal. When you shuffle PCI cards around, you need to get the BIOS to autodetect them again.
On the screen in the BIOS, where you can reserve resources for ISA cards (when set to manual) there is another option set to disable.
Its a one time option. You set it to enable whenever you move or add card and it detects and allocates resources (DM, I/O Ports and IRQs) on the next boot.
Give that a try.
You cannot manually allocate resouces to PCI cards. They are fully plug and play that way by design and have been since inception.

If its video activity related crashes, turn off all AGP acceleration. Some combination of AGP cards and motherbpards have problems like that - its normally due to design errors in the motherboard North Bridge.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

jpalan · Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 1:07 pm Post subject:

Ok, I've set from BIOS Display Init First (or something like that) to AGP (used to be PCI), propably makes no difference, whatsoever.
And since it worked before, I'm not too convinced that the problem has anything to do with AGP.

I also set disabled the whole thing, where you can set IRQ's to primary, secondary or disabled.

And set IDE UDMAs from auto to disabled. Didn't touch the PIO stuff anyway, as it seems to have multiple choises, like auto and something between 1-4.

However, I didn't notice any ISA stuff in the BIOS, which seem quite odd.

Should I dare to touch the memory settings, since I bought extra 128Mb PC133 (I have now 256Mb) and BIOS provides choises like 10ns, 20ns, normal, fast and so on?

jpalan · Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 1:27 pm Post subject:

Ok, I take some of that back (once again).

It's Award Modular BIOS 4.51PG and after changes it says "Updating ESCD... succes" so I guess everything is registered and fine.

I found "Resources Controlled By" and changed it from auto to manual, which revelealed a whole lot of new options, everything was by default set to "PCI/ISA PnP" instead of "Legacy ISA".

I also enabled the "Reset Configuration Data" and IDE UDMA transfers (they were enabled by default before I disabled them just to test)

The memory options on the other hand, I remembered a bit wrong (annoying to boot just to check and write down), it offers Bank 0/1 and 2/3 Dram Timing with options 10ns, 8ns, normal, medium, fast and turbo.

Now, if I only have to try to crash this machine on purpose with changing tv from window to fullscreen and back with multiple net programs running, just to check if anything has changed.

jschellhaass · Guru Joined: 20 Jan 2004 Posts: 341

Are you sure it is the WinTV board causing the problems? Have you tried running the system without the card? Playing a DVD or other video full screen and windowed?

jeff

jpalan · Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 3:23 pm Post subject:

Well, if problems occur only when tv is on, I'm pretty sure it is at least part of the problem.
On the other hand my VIA motherboard is known to cause problems with it, but I don't know what else to do anymore, I do have chipset support compiled in.
Back then with 2.4 kernel simple triton1=1 (well-known quirk) parameter solved it, but it doesnt seem to do that with 2.6.
Don't know why.

jpalan · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:45 am Post subject:

Jesus... Of course this was one of those problems that were just too simple: I updated from 2.4 to 2.6 and while 2.4 uses modules.conf, 2.6 wants modprobe.conf.
Guess what file I hadn't set up... No wonder the bttv option didn't work. :oops:

*Bangs his head to a wall*

Let's think positive: kernel is now well configured and compiled (many many times) and I learnt new things about it, about hw, and about BIOS.