Description of problem: On my Dell Latitude D610 with Radeon 300 all released 2.6.24 kernels are very unstable. Especially when watching TV the system crashes within minutes. 2.6.23 is quite stable. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.6.24.3-34.fc8 How reproducible: I can reproduce the problem but don't have a specific test case. I would be happy to test fixes and new kernel builds. Steps to Reproduce: Run Zattoo player (proprietary media player running in userspace without privileges) and the system crashes within minutes. Actual results: Most of the time static colored vertical stripes are shown and the system doesn't respond to capslock or sysreq. A couple of times I think I have experienced that the picture froze, but the mouse was still alive and sound continued to play for a minute - then it stopped. Additional info: The system runs a bit hot, but not more than with 2.6.23. When booting up in 2.6.23 immediately after a crash it works fine. As it seems to be video related depends on the kernel version and can cause the system to lock up then I think it might have something with the radeon module. When I'm careful about which applications I use then 2.6.24 can run for hours. A minor detail which might be relevant ... or not: I'm using an external display , but haven't been able to get different output on the screens - except that some kind of video sometimes only appears on the builtin display and not on the external. As if some kind of graphic routing isn't initialized properly ...
Created attachment 298842 [details] dmesg from 2.6.23 to show the hardware configuration
ouch.. does anything get logged in xorg.log? I'm not sure of anything in the drm that has changed that could cause this, can you attach an xorg log file from 2.6.23 and 2.6.24 maybe and we'll start from that..
Sorry for late reply. I have tried to nail it down and get a good test case. But no success - only this: 2.6.24.3-50 seemed better; apparently it could run longer before crashing. But even with 2.6.24.4-64 I get crashes. It can run fine for days as long as I don't stress it with moving pictures. I feared that it could be overheating somehow. But now I'm running my 1.86 GHz cpu at 1.07 GHz, using cpuspeed MAX_SPEED. The machine seem not to get as hot as before - but still it crashes. It takes some minutes before 2.6.24 crashes, but immediately after a 2.6.24 crash I can boot up in 2.6.23 and it works flawlessly. So I think that excludes overheating.
Created attachment 301447 [details] kernel-messages from /var/log/messages from 2.6.24.4-64.fc8 crash at approx Apr 6 20:46.
Created attachment 301448 [details] /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old found efter freeze and alt-sysreq-b
Well ... It might be heating-related anyway ... I have experienced lockup with 2.6.23, and have also seen 2.6.24 run longer than usually. At the moment I think that downclocking with cpuspeed significantly improves the stability. And I think that running with xrandr dualscreen also have improved 2.6.24 stability. Once. Perhaps. At the moment my best guess is that 2.6.24 is more effective and stresses the machine more than 2.6.23. But if linux previously didn't stress machines more than they could handle and now stress them so much that some are unstable, then it could be considered a regression bug.
Unfortunately there is nothing in those attachments but normal messages.
A consistent pattern appears: Because 2.6.24 consistently crashed I have been using kernel-2.6.23.15-137.fc8 with cpuspeed-downclocked to 1.07 instead of 1.87 GHz. This setup works fine as long as the machine isn't suspended. After suspend/resume the display hangs when Zattoo starts showing video. The machine keeps running - at least system services not using the display. Keyboard doesn't respond to caps-lock but alt-sysreq-b works. But now with kernel-2.6.24.5-85.fc8 (or other system updates?) it seems to work, even after suspend/resume. Great! I'm not aware of any changes that explains the changed behaviour. I will keep testing and follow up here.
Naaah. An hour after I reported that it worked with kernel-2.6.24.5-85.fc8 I got a crash again. I have now upgraded to Fedora 9, and generally (except for minor but annoying sound hiccups about once a second) it works fine. BUT I have experienced the same crash with 2.6.25.3-18.fc9.i686. And I also got a similar crash where the system started trashing the disk while working without increased load or memory usage, ending with the wellknown freeze. And once I got a freeze where the sound continued to play but with huge hiccups or echos.
Mads, Could you test with current F10 ? If you can reproduce with the latest F10 kernel, could you post dmesg as uncompressed text attachment here ? Thanks
I don't use that application any longer. I just installed it again, and it seemed to work just fine with current F10. So I will assume that it has been solved and will close this issue.