Linux-Hams archive - August 1998: PI card causing complete Linux freeze?

PI card causing complete Linux freeze?

John Ackermann N8UR (evprii.mhks@eunet.yu)
Wed, 05 Aug 1998 21:06:07 -0400

First, I did get the scc driver problem solved. Note to myself for the
future: the "SIOCSCCINI : : Invalid argument" message from sccinit was
the result of an address conflict with my ne2000 ethernet card. I
think I have the scc driver working now, so that's one problem down.

But I'm seeing another problem tonight. The machine that is using the
DRSI card for 1200 baud is also using an Ottawa PI card for the 19.2kb
port. I've run PI cards under NOS and Linux for years with good luck,
but tonight I'm seeing something completely new. With the PI card
installed now (I had it out when I was working on the DRSI card
problems), I'm getting random lockups -- so bad that the video goes
blank and the keyboard lights are dead; all you can do is a hardware
reset. I don't think I've *ever* seen Linux fall over this hard, and I
know I've never seen the PI card do anything like this. There's no log
message to indicate what went wrong, but it appears that the problem
may be tied to when the PI card transmits -- though it will transmit a
number of packets before this happens.

The configuration for the PI card is one that I've used in the past
without problems. The card works just fine until after some packets
have been sent, and then the lockup occurs. The DRSI card and the PI
card don't have any overlap in IO ports or IRQs. Both boards are
detected properly at boot time, and both seem to work for at least a
few minutes. This problem did not occur when only the DRSI card was in
the machine; it started after I reinstalled the PI card.

For what it's worth, I'm running kernel 2.0.34, modules-14f, and utils
2.1.42a.

I'm about to start trying to swap things around to see if I can isolate
the problem, but I wonder (a) if anyone has seen this behaviour and has
any clues; and (b) if there's any known incompatibility between running
the scc driver and the pi driver in the same system.

Thanks for any help,

John N8UR
tzw.lmfqktlptn@mx.dy.fi