[ltp] display, cursor, keyboard hang, T40, RH9

[Neil Weisenfeld]

Not sure about all of the hdparm options, but I believe that you can
make your life unhappy by trying random things, so I'd do some research
if you want to make other adjustments.

If the I/O controller hub was not properly recognized by the kernel, you
will not be able to enable DMA using hdparm.  

Prior to patching the kernel to properly recognize the I/O controller
hub chip and to provide DMA disk access, I found the machine almost
completely unusable interactively if you were doing heavy disk access.

Despite what Fabrice has said, recent kernel updates from RedHat have
recognized the new ICH4-M (82801DBM) fine (sorry Fabrice!)  At the very
least 2.4.20-18.9 from RedHat works out of the box.  RedHat very
specfically added patches in response to a customer bugreport about
things not working properly on a Dell Pentium M laptop.

Now, with all of that said I'll probably post something soon about the
serious stability problems that *I'm* having with my T40p, but I think
that I may just have a hardware issue.


Regards,
neil










On Wed, 2003-06-11 at 14:14, otisg wrote:
> Neil,
> 
> Thanks for the tip.
> I see using_dma is set to 0 (zero).
> 
> Should it be 1 (on)?
> 
> Should I set anything else to 1?  For instance, IO_support?
> 
> Thanks,
> Otis
> 
> 
> 
> ---- On 11 Jun 2003 13:02:07, Neil Weisenfeld
> (weisen+ltp@ai.mit.edu) wrote:
> 
> > Hello, Otis.  
> > 
> > If you're running the original RedHat 9 kernel and not one of
> the more
> > recent errata kernels, I think that DMA disk I/O was not
> properly
> > supported since the new chipset in the T40p was not
> recognized.   
> > 
> > Try:
> > 
> > hdparm /dev/hda
> > 
> > as root and see if using_dma is 1 (on).
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Neil
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > I am a new user of Linux on a TP.  I've been using Linux on
> > > desktop for years.
> > > 
> > > I have RedHat 9.0 installed on a T40 ThinkPad.
> > > I noticed that my xterm (gnome-terminal) likes to
> freeze/hang
> > > sometimes.  This tends to happen when I'm doing things like
> > > copying large files over the network using scp, or when I
> am
> > > unpacking some large archive.
> > > 
> > > The symptoms are that my cursor disapears for a few seconds,
> and
> > > my keyboard become completely unresponsive for a few
> seconds.
> > > 
> > > Is this a normal thing?
> > > Does this happen when the machine is in some kind of a
> sleeping
> > > mode?
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > Otis
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> >
> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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