2000-10-27 10:53:47

by Yoann Vandoorselaere

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Possible critical VIA vt82c686a chip bug (private question)

Vojtech Pavlik <[email protected]> writes:

> On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 12:02:20PM +0200, Martin Mares wrote:
>
> > > So this is not our problem here. Anyway I guess it's time to hunt for
> > > i8259 accesses in the kernel that lack the necessary spinlock, even when
> > > they're not probably the cause of the problem we see here.
> >
> > BTW what about trying to modify your work-around code to make it
> > attempt to read the timer again? This way we could test whether it was
> > a race condition during timer read or really timer jumping to a bogus
> > value.
>
> Actually if I don't reprogram the timer (and just ignore the value for
> example), the work-around code keeps being called again and again very
> often (between 1x/minute to 100x/second) after the first failure, even
> when the system is idle.
>
> When reprogramming, next failure happens only after stressing the system
> again.
>
> So it's not just a race, the impact of the failure on the chip is
> permanent and stays till it's reprogrammed.

Are you sure there is not an error in the way the
chipset is programmed ?

--
-- Yoann http://www.mandrakesoft.com/~yoann/
"Programming is a race between programmers, who try and make more and more
idiot-proof software, and universe, which produces more and more remarkable
idiots. Until now, universe leads the race" -- R. Cook