Bug#515125: general: cpu frequency scalling crashes my system
 

Package: general
Severity: important

i am not sure what exacly causes the problem. it maight be cpufreq, or kernel
or maybe something else (or CPU Frequency Scalling Monitor applet in GNOME
which is rather in doubt).

when enabled "AMD Quiet'n'cool" in BIOS (the CPU frequency scalling) and have
installed CPUFreq package, it very often happens that system crashes totally.

it happens estimatelly 0.5-3 times per a day (0.5 means once per two days) that
my machine freezez (and the only way left is hard reset), or resets suddenly,
or my X server crashed (that happen once) and some stack-trace was in console.
one moment later machine had 'self-reset', so i couldn't note that stack.

i am observing the problem for year or even longer (on few different kernels),
but reporting now because i have just discovered that crashes are caused by
frequency-scalling. when "AMD Quiet'n'cool" is disabled in BIOS, nothing
bad happens to the system, i.e. no crashes are occuring.

crashes happen when doing some suddenly actions which need to
rise-up cpu-frequency, such as compiling, or starting application that
needs much of cpu-resources at a time. when system is just up, but has
no any user action, or when watching movie, nothing bad happens.

cheers.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686-bigmem (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash



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Bug#515125: general: cpu frequency scalling crashes my system
 

reassign 515125 linux-2.6
thanks

Hi,

Thank you for your bug report.

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 08:13:45PM +0100, Mark Poks wrote:

> i am not sure what exacly causes the problem. it maight be cpufreq,
> or kernel or maybe something else (or CPU Frequency Scalling Monitor
> applet in GNOME which is rather in doubt).

> when enabled "AMD Quiet'n'cool" in BIOS (the CPU frequency scalling)
> and have installed CPUFreq package, it very often happens that
> system crashes totally.

Well, the most likely is either the kernel, or a bug in your BIOS. I'm
reassigning this bug to the kernel package so that the experts on this
can take a look at this.

What CPU, motherboard and BIOS version do you have exactly? Please
send us the contents of the files /proc/cpuinfo,
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor and
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_driver, as well as the
output of the command "lsmod" (all this taken when "AMD Quiet'n'cool
is enabled in the kernel). The BIOS version is shown on the boot
screen, before grub (or lilo), usually on the third / fourth line or
something like that.

You may also try to see if there is a BIOS update available for your
motherboard; it may solve the problem.

> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: 5.0
> APT prefers testing
> APT policy: (500, 'testing')
> Architecture: i386 (i686)

> Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686-bigmem (SMP w/2 CPU cores)

--
Lionel



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Bug#515125: general: cpu frequency scalling crashes my system
 

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 08:13:45PM +0100, Mark Poks wrote:
> i am not sure what exacly causes the problem. it maight be cpufreq, or kernel
> or maybe something else (or CPU Frequency Scalling Monitor applet in GNOME
> which is rather in doubt).
>
> when enabled "AMD Quiet'n'cool" in BIOS (the CPU frequency scalling) and have
> installed CPUFreq package, it very often happens that system crashes totally.

Hi Mark,

I had similar problems with my AMD64 system. Whenever frequency scaling
was enabled the machine would crash within a few hours of operation,
even when it was idle. The kernel would oops a few times before finally
locking up.

I also saw video and database corruption, but generally the system was
stable.

The problem was a BIOS bug. It started when I increased my system RAM to
4 DIMMs. The CPU (AMD64 939 pin x2 4800) can't handle 4 DIMMs at the
full speed of 400MHz; the BIOS is supposed to automatically slow the RAM
down to 333MHz in this case, but that didn't work on my Gigabyte K8NS
Ultra 939. I slowed the RAM down manually and the system is now
perfectly stable.

Maybe something like this is happening to you too. Memory tests did not
show any fault by the way.

Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>



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