Hardware diagnostic tools? Interrupts?
 

I just upgraded my Fedora 16 development workstation from an
AMD Phenom II to an Intel i7 2600K on an Asus P8Z68-M Pro along
with a Kingston SSD. Unfortunately, I ran into a bit of a snag.
*It hangs in the boot process with the last line being:

ahci 0000: 06:00.0: PCI INT
A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18



I used Phoronix to run some
benchmarks on my system prior to the install, but am wondering
if there are some other tools that can help diagnose hardware
problems.* Please post any suggestions.* I ran memtest for 4+
hours and the 16GB was perfect.* Oh, and I am not over clocking
anything.* The only other card in the system is an eVGA 7950GS.

My original boot drive was
a 3Ware PCI 8xxx RAID controller with two 1TB Samsung drives
mirrored and using LVM.* The halt happens with this system and
with the Fedora 16 install DVD.* It did not happen with a Linux
Mint 12 install DVD or a Lubuntu install CD or earlier Fedora
releases (I think I tried an 8 or an 11).** They would all boot
their live images fine.



I had researched this
motherboard before buying it and saw that it had been used
successfully by both Fedora and other Linux users. At the end of
this email, I will relate all the avenues thus far explored, but
believe at this point I may be dealing with an interrupt timing
problem with a 3Ware PCI 8xxx RAID controller.* So yesterday, I
decided to give the Lubuntu a try.* The RAID mirror was my main
drive, but the SSD is now my boot drive with the LVM volumes now
having their mount points on the SSD.* All seemed well so I
thought perhaps it was a Fedora bug based on some posts I read,
however all of a sudden, the LVM partitions started getting I/O
errors. /proc/mounts would show the partitions mounted rw, but
as soon as there was an error, it would change to ro. At that
point, any read to the 3Ware partitions would generate an error
and update the /proc/mounts to ro.* I could copy upwards of 20GB
of data with no problem, but then boom.



This is my first
motherboard with UEFI. Initially, I tried disabling features to
get it the F16 install DVD to boot. At one point, configuring
the SATA drives to use IDE instead of AHIC, it got to the point
of display a white background with a cursor, but was hung at
that point. I also noted that the Scroll and Num lock keys would
cause the keyboard LEDs to blink once, but did not stay on. Very
strange.



Once a upon a time, there
was a Fedora release where I had to insert a delay in the boot
parameters because the 3Ware controllers (9550SX and 9650SE)
were taking too long to initialize. Are there parameters to
tweak the 3w-xxxx driver?* Or am I dealing with a defective Asus
motherboard? Most of the time, a feature in a defective
motherboard will just not work, like a keyboard/mouse
controller, Ethernet port, slot, or video. Memory can be flaky,
but motherboards not so much.* Thoughts?* Thank you for any help
or suggestions.



Fred








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Hardware diagnostic tools? Interrupts?
 

Check the SSD manufacturer's site to see if there is new
SSD firmware available. Also check the BIOS settings to
make sure there isn't something silly going on like the
BIOS defaulting to running the sata interfaces in some
emulated IDE mode.

My corsair SSD drive had lots of warnings on various web
sites about this sort of thing. Apparently it is very picky
about the way the interface drives it.
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Hardware diagnostic tools? Interrupts?
 

The interrupt message on which the system is hanging is associated with
the 3Ware controller. I did check the Kingston site for info on
upgrading the SSD. Unfortunately, they only support upgrading the
firmware on Windows 7. They suggest putting it on a Windows 7 box as a
secondary drive, but I don't have a Windows 7 box. Plus the bugs that
they list do not match the system's behavior.


I might be able to take the drive out, put it in its provided case for
use as an external drive and find someone who has Windows 7.


On 12/19/2011 11:13 AM, Tom Horsley wrote:

Check the SSD manufacturer's site to see if there is new
SSD firmware available. Also check the BIOS settings to
make sure there isn't something silly going on like the
BIOS defaulting to running the sata interfaces in some
emulated IDE mode.

My corsair SSD drive had lots of warnings on various web
sites about this sort of thing. Apparently it is very picky
about the way the interface drives it.


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