I recently did a major upgrade to my computer replacing the mobo, ram,
processor, and graphics card. Since then I have had nothing but problems. I
first tried Mandrake 9.2, but it was giving me so many problems that I tried
installing Fedora Core 1, but could not even get it to install. I then got SuSE
9.0 Pro which is the only disto that installed and booted without any problems.
However I continued to have what seemed like a bunch of random problems. I
decided to take out all the PCI cards except the AGP graphics card, and I gave
the machine to my brother for a week who ran Windows on it. He said that he
didn't have any problems running Windows on the machine, but after reinstalling
Linux I'm continuing to have problems.
The most noticable problem is that the machine seems slow. It's not that it
takes a long time to load applications, but when I'm using a web browser and
just loading a normal page, my mouse will slow down to a crawl. As if it were an
older machine performing heavy disk acctivity. I do have dma enabled on the
drive, and here are the results from a benchmark with hdparm:
linux:/home/jesse # hdparm -t -T /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1188 MB in 2.00 seconds = 592.81 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 144 MB in 3.01 seconds = 47.84 MB/sec
I'm not sure what these values should be, but this looks reasonable to me. I
have tried switching the X drivers (tried nv, 2D nvidia driver, and the latest
3d nvidia driver), I have also tried using both KDE and Gnome, and I have tried
using X in failsafe mode, but I always get the same results.
I have also noticed lots of errors appearing in my log files. I'll give some
examples. Here is what my hardware looks like:
Motherboard: Asus A7N266-VM (nforce chipset)
Processor: AMD Athlon 2400+
RAM: 768MB
Graphics: NVidia GeForce 3 TI 500
>From /var/log/messages:
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual
address 00acb2b7
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: printing eip:
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: 00acb2b7
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: *pde = 00000000
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: Oops: 0000 2.4.21-99-athlon #1 Wed Sep 24 13:34:32
UTC 2003
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: CPU: 0
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: EIP: 0010:[<00acb2b7>] Tainted: P
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: EFLAGS: 00010006
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: eax: c6bcb16c ebx: 00333537 ecx: 00000001
edx: 00acb2b7
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: esi: 00000000 edi: cd3eec84 ebp: c973be94
esp: c973be70
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: Process kdeinit (pid: 4480, stackpage=c973b000)
Feb 23 17:43:26 linux kernel: Stack: c011b8bf c6bcb16c 00e1e9ef 00000001
00000286 00000001 ca743580 00000000
Feb 23 17:43:27 linux kernel: 00000000 00000000 c029379e 00000004
00000004 c0243b60 ca743580 c0240ee9
Feb 23 17:43:27 linux kernel: ca743580 c43b8540 c0241f92 c43b8540
00000004 00000004 c02958b3 c43b8540
Feb 23 17:43:27 linux kernel: Call Trace: [__wake_up+47/144]
[unix_write_space+94/112] [memcpy_toiovec+64/112] [sock_wfree+73/80]
[__kfree_skb+66/336]
Feb 23 17:43:27 linux kernel: Call Trace: [<c011b8bf>] [<c029379e>]
[<c0243b60>] [<c0240ee9>] [<c0241f92>]
Feb 23 17:43:27 linux kernel: [unix_stream_recvmsg+403/944]
[sock_recvmsg+75/272] [sockfd_lookup+28/144] [sock_read+132/144]
[sys_read+163/304] [system_call+51/56]
Feb 23 17:43:27 linux kernel: [<c02958b3>] [<c023e5eb>] [<c023e34c>]
[<c023e734>] [<c0149753>] [<c010904b>]
Feb 23 17:43:27 linux kernel: Code: Bad EIP value.
I keep getting a bunch of errors like this, with different processes listed. I'm
guessing this is why I am getting such strange behaviour from this machine, but
I have no idea what it means.
>From /var/log/boot.msg:
<4>hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
<4>hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
<4>hda: cache flushing failed. disable write back cacheing for journalled file
systems
<4>hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
<4>hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
<4>hda: cache flushing failed. disable write back cacheing for journalled file
systems
I also get this sort of error for my cdrom devices in other logs sometimes,
again I don't know what to make of it. In the same file I get errors such as:
<4> ACPI-1121: *** Error: Method execution failed [\_SB_.SRS_] (Node
effe5400), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT
But I know I can get rid of these if I disable ACPI.
Anyways, I hope I haven't lost everyone. I really need some help because I don't
know what to make of all this, and now my brother is going around telling
everyone that Windows works fine on this machine, so it's really making Linux
look bad.
Thanks guys,
Jesse
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