Re: Failing back to INSANE timesource :) Time stopped today.

From: john stultz (johnstul_at_us.ibm.com)
Date: 04/20/04

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    To: "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl>
Date:	Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:18:44 -0700

    On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 05:40, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
    > On Tue, 20 Apr 2004, Niclas Gustafsson wrote:
    >
    > > I've now been running the system since last week, about 6 days now with
    > > sometimes quite high load, both in regard to CPU usage and network
    > > traffic.
    > > And it seems to be running just fine with the patch from Maciej.
    >
    > I'm glad to read this.

    It appears to be working here in our labs as well.

    > > I've got a couple of questions,
    > >
    > > When was this bug introduced? Was it 2.6.1 ( or rather somewhere in
    > > 2.5)? Or was it already present in 2.4?
    >
    > Well, the bug has been introduced by IBM in their firmware (SMM code).
    > ;-) The patch only works it around. Functionally the changed code is the
    > same for your configuration.
    >
    > If you are asking about the problematic code, then it's there since
    > 2.3.x, so it's in 2.4, too. It's a part of the NMI watchdog support,
    > though it's used for ordinary timer interrupts for certain systems as
    > well.

    Are you saying that 2.4 will exhibit this problem as well, or that 2.4
    already has an equivalent workaround?

    > > When will this patch be merged into the 2.6-tree? I don't have to
    > > stress the impact of this problem on IBM servers as they are rendered
    > > quite useless.
    >
    > Apparently there are problems with the workaround on certain AMD
    > Athlon-based systems. I suppose they need to be resolved somehow first.

    Can you point me to any threads on this issue. I'd like to do what I can
    to help get this workaround in.

    > > Which other IBM models are affected? Can I run 2.6.5 on my 345:s or
    > > 335:s? Do they use the same buggy SMM firmware?
    >
    > Ask IBM. The reason is an incorrect handling of PIC (8259A) state
    > saving/restoration.

    I'm following up w/ our hardware group about this issue.

    Thanks so much for the help!
    -john

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