Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 22:21:47 -0500
From: timothy parkinson <t@timothyparkinson.com>
To: akpm@osdl.org
Cc: johnstul@us.ibm.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH] Better "Losing Ticks" Error Message
Message-ID: <20040124032147.GA177@h00a0cca1a6cf.ne.client2.attbi.com>
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	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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Andrew,

Seems like a lot of people see the below error message, but aren't quite sure
why it happens or how to fix it.  I sure didn't.

Here's my attempt at remedying that - Should apply cleanly against 2.6.1.

Thanks,
Timothy

diff -urN linux-2.6.1-orig/arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c linux-2.6.1/arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c
--- linux-2.6.1-orig/arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c	2004-01-09 01:59:46.000000000 -0500
+++ linux-2.6.1/arch/i386/kernel/timers/timer_tsc.c	2004-01-23 21:16:24.000000000 -0500
@@ -232,9 +232,13 @@
 		/* sanity check to ensure we're not always losing ticks */
 		if (lost_count++ > 100) {
 			printk(KERN_WARNING "Losing too many ticks!\n");
-			printk(KERN_WARNING "TSC cannot be used as a timesource."
-					" (Are you running with SpeedStep?)\n");
-			printk(KERN_WARNING "Falling back to a sane timesource.\n");
+			printk(KERN_WARNING "TSC cannot be used as a timesource.  ");
+			printk(KERN_WARNING "Possible reasons for this are:\n");
+			printk(KERN_WARNING "  You're running with Speedstep,\n");
+			printk(KERN_WARNING "  You don't have DMA enabled for your hard disk (see hdparm),\n");
+			printk(KERN_WARNING "  Incorrect TSC synchronization on an SMP system (see dmesg).\n");
+			printk(KERN_WARNING "Falling back to a sane timesource now.\n");
+
 			clock_fallback();
 		}
 	} else
-
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