I’ve been waiting for an i386 build of RC5 to appear in the directory but it hasn’t. Should I try RC4 instead or keep waiting until a newer i386 build appears? AMD64 isn’t supported by the processor.

Unfortunately I didn’t make a note of when exactly the issue began. But I can give you a timeframe: it wasn’t there when I filed Bug #903831 on 2011-12-13, probably still not there on 2011-12-16 when I made comment #5 on the bug, and probably was there when I made comment #7 on that bug on 2012-01-06. (I’m being cautious with the ’probablies’ because of all the overlapping issues here.)

3.2.0-17.27 seems to be interchangeable with 3.2.0-17.26 in what I described above, i.e. no change wrt. this bug.

@jsalisbury: Yeah, my Intel hardware’s got its own set of problems. :) I’ll get back to doing tests on those later this week.

I’ve just had a GPU lockup with 3.3.0-030300rc4-generic. Would this be yet another issue (i.e. not this bug nor bug #938894)? If so, where (if anywhere) should I file it? I’m pasting below here what was in syslog about it.

Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.040107] radeon 0000:01:05.0: GPU lockup CP stall for more than 419884msec
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.040113] GPU lockup (waiting for 0x00103023 last fence id 0x00103022)
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.040125] [drm] Disabling audio support
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.041548] radeon 0000:01:05.0: GPU softreset
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.041550] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_008010_GRBM_STATUS=0xA0003030
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.041551] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_008014_GRBM_STATUS2=0x00000003
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.041553] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_000E50_SRBM_STATUS=0x20000040
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.041559] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_008020_GRBM_SOFT_RESET=0x00007FEE
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.056444] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_008020_GRBM_SOFT_RESET=0x00000001
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.072335] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_008010_GRBM_STATUS=0xA0003030
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.072337] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_008014_GRBM_STATUS2=0x00000003
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.072339] radeon 0000:01:05.0: R_000E50_SRBM_STATUS=0x20008040
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.073333] radeon 0000:01:05.0: GPU reset succeed
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.094096] [drm] PCIE GART of 512M enabled (table at 0x00000000C0040000).
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.094153] radeon 0000:01:05.0: WB enabled
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.094156] [drm] fence driver on ring 0 use gpu addr 0xa0000c00 and cpu addr 0xffff88020f609c00
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.127631] [drm] ring test on 0 succeeded in 1 usecs
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.127656] [drm] ib test on ring 0 succeeded in 1 usecs
Feb 26 19:53:38 saegusa kernel: [ 8031.127659] [drm] Enabling audio support

@jsalisbury: Alright, thanks. I’m running 3.3.0-030300rc4-generic now. Let’s see how it works out!

Forgot to mention I could reboot after the crash with Alt+PrtSc+REISUB (if that matters).

A crash that threw me (from the desktop) into the console to show the Oops. Hasn’t happened before as to my knowledge, looks different from bug #917668 (which I’m affected by), but similar to bug #886706 (and bug #495322), but kernel bugs are too much out of my league to tell for sure.

Wasn’t doing anything specific that I could reproduce this with currently. At least Chromium, Transmission and Rhythmbox were active during the time.

Syslog has some data, I’ll attach it manually if apport doesn’t bring it in automatically.

I’ll happily do further testing and/or log uploads at request.

@jsalisbury: On this setup, there were seemingly similar freezes before Precise (I was using Lucid until then), but being so far apart and without a reliable recipe for reproducing, I mostly just ignored the issue. To give a clue as to the rarity, an (again seemingly) similar freeze happened just now, for the first time since I reported the bug, so if it’s the same issue, it’s been in hiding for over a month.

Unfortunately the logs didn’t have anything about this crash, and I couldn’t ssh in either. As I have yet to gather any substantial data apart from the little I posted above, there’s no way of knowing whether it’s always been the same issue or not. The symptom on the surface has always been very similar, but I guess that’s true for most freezes are even if brought on by unrelated causes.

I’m not afraid of testing the mainline kernel per se, but I’m hesitant because with this occurence rate, wouldn’t I be trying to prove a negative? Would 2 months without the issue constitute a ’kernel-fixed-upstream’? 6 months? Also, should I install v3.3-rc2-precise as you suggested, or the more recent 3.3-rc4-precise now? If the more recent one, should I then stick to it, or keep upgrading as new mainline kernels are built?

With both 3.2.0-16 and 3.2.0-17, what I said in #8 still holds, with -16 and -17 behaving just as -15 did. 3.2.0-17 added something interesting though: booting 3.2.0-17-pae in recovery mode ”breaks” the -pae’s like (non-recovery booting) 3.2.0-14-pae does. To be sure, I tried recovery booting other kernels going back to 3.2.0-14, and couldn’t reproduce this with them (not even with 3.2.0-14-pae!) . Recovery booting 3.2.0-17 non-pae also doesn’t bring it on, it’s just recovery booting 3.2.0-17-pae.

The steps to reproducing this freeze with 3.2.0-17 are:
1. Boot 3.2.0-17-pae in recovery mode.
2. In the recovery menu, select ”root”.
3. From the root prompt, just reboot.
4. Boot 3.2.0-17-pae (normally).

The ”fix” also still holds: just boot a non-pae kernel once, and the pae’s again work.

After dozens and dozens of boots with the 3.2.0-14 and 3.2.0-15 kernels, here’s what I know.

1. This *is* tied to wistron_btns as I reported. Without it, boot never fails (the way I initially reported, though I’ll redefine what ”fails” means further below).
2. With non-pae kernels, boot never fails.
3. With 3.2.0-14-pae, the boot always fails.
4. A cold boot with 3.2.0-15-pae never fails.
5. A re-boot with 3.2.0-15-pae after a *non-failing* boot never fails.
6. A re-boot of 3.2.0-15-pae, after a *failing* boot (of 3.2.0-14-pae for instance), is *almost* sure to fail. I’d give it a 10% chance of not failing.

If you put it another way, this appears is pretty interesting:
1. You can ”break” 3.2.0-15-pae by booting 3.2.0-14-pae first.
2. You ”fix” a thus ”broken” 3.2.0-15-pae by booting a non-pae kernel.

I suspect this brokenness is actually hidden in the hardware, in something (the wifi key perhaps?) controlled by wistron_btns. Booting 3.2.0-14-pae puts the controller(?) in a ”broken” state from which 3.2.0-15-pae can’t recover, but a non-pae kernel can. And though 3.2.0-15-pae can’t recover a ”broken” controller, it also cannot put it into that ”broken” state (which is a good turn of development).

So now, about that ”fails” part.

I discovered by accident that although the system appears to freeze in boots I referred to as ”fails”, it has in fact been brought down to *almost* complete halt, but *just* almost. If I’m patient enough to wait, it does actually boot into LDM, from where I can switch to another VT and log in… slooooooowly.

Thus I was able to find out what’s going on that makes it so slow:

jani@amilo:~$ head dmesg.fail
stron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.554522] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.554722] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.554921] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.555120] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.555320] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.555518] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.555717] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.555916] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
[ 1011.556134] wistron_btns: Unknown key code 10
jani@amilo:~$ grep wistron dmesg.fail | wc -l
2520

Note that this is unrelated to pressing any actual physical buttons. It’ wistron_btns misbehaving under the conditions I described above.