From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2 i686) Description of problem: I am using Dell Inspiron 5000e. I have both windows and RedHat 7.1 linux on it. I upgraded my BIOS with the latest greatest (?) release of BIOS A06 from Dell support site. And then my problem started. From what I see, Winodows works fine. But Linux does not. I reinstalled linux after BIOS upgrade, but it did not help. The symptoms are that my keyboard often freezes totally. There is nothing I can type, CTL/ALT/DEL does not work either. The only way to avoid brutal power down with the button is to do Fn/Suspend, and then push the power button to wake it up. But then it freezes again. I get it both on the console, and also after I start KDE. The mouse work, other things seem to work, but the keyboard is hosed down. While I cannot be 100% sure, it seems like I got this behaviour after upgrading the BIOS to A06. I did everything by the book, and beside... I do not have this problem with Windows 98 SE which came installed with my Dell. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot 2. Type four (4) characters 3. Fn/Suspend --> Power 4. Type four (4) characters etc Actual Results: got res[1800:187f] for resource 0 of PCI device 115d:0003 got res[10800800:108007ff] for resource 1 of PCI device 115d:0003 got res[10800800:10800fff] for resource 2 of PCI device 115d:0003 got res[10400000:10403fff] for resource 6 of PCI device 115d:0003 PCI: Enabling device 02.00.0 (0000 -> 0003) got res[1880:1887] for resource 0 of PCI device 115d:0103 got res[10801000:108017ff] for resource 1 of PCI device 115d:0003 got res[10801000:10801fff] for resource 2 of PCI device 115d:0003 got res[10404000:10407fff] for resource 6 of PCI device 115d:0003 PCI Enabling device 02.00.1 (0000 -> 0003) PCI Setting latency timer of device 02.00.0 to 64 spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7 Expected Results: Normal typing... Additional info: The problem was quite reproducible. It gets me both in the console mode and in the KDE X-window mode. After typing 4 (four) characters my keyboard was frozed, and I had to do Fn/Suspend->Power dance to type next four characters. A lot of work to type: "shut" "down" " -h " "now" This is what spews to the console. Below are few thinsg about this which I found on the WEB. I do not even try to understand it. http://support.intel.com/support/controllers/peripheral/7507.htm http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-hardware@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu/msg02524.h\tml http://faqs.jmas.co.jp/FAQs/386bsd-faq/part4 In the last document I found: In spite of the number of times this has come up (and people have even referenced this section) there are still at least two questions on the net about this. A memorable one was a guy who was just vehement that the stray int 7 was what was keeping his system from booting. In fact, he went so far as to say that this document was practically worthless because I didn't tell him how to fix it. Of course, once he configured his hard drive controller so that it was on the right interrupt, his booting problem went away. I have said it before and I will say it again. For MOST users they do not pose a real threat to your operations. I have heard of three people (out of at least 2000) that have actually have problems so bad that they couldn't proceed. They bought new computers, and the problem went away. These stray interrupts are caused by something in the PC. I have yet to see a convincing explanation of precisely what, but they are definitely caused by something. There are four ways to deal with this problem. 1) Ignore them. They are spurious and do not effect the operation of your computer. 2) Implement the lpt driver. This way, the driver traps (the lpt driver expects IRQ 7) and then quietly discards them. That is why when folks implement the lpt driver the 'problem' goes away. The computer is taught how to ignore them. 3) Do what the original 386bsd code did. Comment out the diagnostic and associated code that tries to deal with them so you don't see the error message. 4) Buy a new computer that doesn't cause this problem. It is a known hardware problem with the 8259 being reset incorrectly in hardware. ============= I do not want to buy the new computer, and I therefore I installed the printer driver on my laptop (though I do not have any printer attached) and this HELPED. I could say that problem is solved. But is it? Jan
Actually adding a printer to serve IRQ7 helped only initially. Then, after reboot, I got back to square 1. I am sorry if I will make you angry... But As you may notice I am writing this comment from within W98SE. Windows work without problems...
I found a way around it. I was using the serial mouse (generic 3 button in the Mouse Systems mode configured by mouseconfig) on the 9pin port. When I removed the serial mouse and used the PS/2 on the mini-din port, the laptop was working (though the spurious interrupt was still there on boot). In short, after upgrading the Bios to A6, you cannot use serial mouse with the Dell 5000e under Linux (but it works under Win98SE).
I always get the spurious interrupt message and couple of other messages that indicate that more than one device is usiing the same irq. Only on ,my Dell inspiron 4000 (none on my desktop). However, these messages don't seem to cause any problem for me. So, I actually rebuild the kernel and comment those print lines in the kernel source.....not a good practice but I do not like to see error messages mixed in my boot messages while everything is fine.
I get the same error message on tty1 and /var/log/messages on my laptop, running linux RedHat 9.0. The problem is not reproducible, i.e. it happens randomly, but when it happens either the system slows down and ventually freezes, or the sound card does not work, or the network card stops working after a while ... I gather it is connected with the way the operating system and/or the BIOS assign IRQ numbers to the various devices. This is a dynamic process, as far as I understand, which can give different results at each reboot. (And therefore problems with different devices each time.) It may be kindled or fixed by rebooting linux after a windows session, since windows sets IRQs of its own. I am told that some BIOSes allow setting static IRQs (??) of their own, but mine doesn't. I can only choose among the options "yes/no/auto" for plug'n'play. If I got it wrong or some more help is available, please, tell me!
Thanks for the bug report. However, Red Hat no longer maintains this version of the product. Please upgrade to the latest version and open a new bug if the problem persists. The Fedora Legacy project (http://fedoralegacy.org/) maintains some older releases, and if you believe this bug is interesting to them, please report the problem in the bug tracker at: http://bugzilla.fedora.us/