[ltp] HPET timer on thinkpads?

[Leon Brokken]

Hi Shem,

Shem Multinymous wrote:
> Hi Leon,
>
> On 10/23/07, Leon Brokken <leon.brokken@med.lu.se> wrote:
>   
>> Could that explain the hangs every now and then, when my T41 doesn't
>> accept any input any longer? Processes keep running but there is no info
>> from fan, batt or temp available (judged from conky system monitor).
>> Even the power button doesn't work anymore, I need to power off by
>> unplugging AC and removing the battery.
>>     
>
> Judging by the symptoms, what you're seeing is a hang of the embedded
> controller (which is running its own firmware independently of the CPU
> and handles all the things you mentioned). This is very dangerous,
> since the EC is also in charge of fan control, battery charging
> control and emergency thermal shutdown.
>
> It's important to find out what causes the EC hangs. How often do you
> see them? Are they correlated with some activity or configuration?
> Does unloading some modules (in particular acpi, hdaps, tp_smapi)
> prevent them? Are you using an old version of tp_smapi?
>   
In the meantime I found out that tp_smapi (v0.32) was not loaded. I have
now added it to rc.modules so it gets loaded at boot and haven't noticed
a problem yet. Before it happpened maybe once every few days, without
any obvious pattern. I have a T41, Slackware-current, kernel 2.6.23.1. I
never noticed similar issues with 2.6.22.

Anyway, here's some output from dmesg:

leon@shpritsz:~$ dmesg|grep -i thinkpad_ec
thinkpad_ec: thinkpad_ec 0.32 loaded.

leon@shpritsz:~$ dmesg|grep -i smapi
tp_smapi 0.32 loading...
tp_smapi successfully loaded (smapi_port=0xb2).

leon@shpritsz:~$ dmesg|grep -i hdaps
hdaps: initial mode latch is 0x01
hdaps: setting ec_rate=250, filter_order=2
hdaps: fake_data_mode set to 0
hdaps: device successfully initialized.
input: ThinkPad HDAPS joystick emulation as
/devices/platform/hdaps/input/input9
input: ThinkPad HDAPS accelerometer data as
/devices/platform/hdaps/input/input10
hdaps: driver successfully loaded.
leon@shpritsz:~$

leon@shpritsz:~$ dmesg|grep thinkpad_acpi
thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad ACPI Extras v0.18-20071013
thinkpad_acpi: http://ibm-acpi.sf.net/
thinkpad_acpi: ThinkPad BIOS 1RETDRWW (3.23 ), EC 1RHT71WW-3.04
thinkpad_acpi: IBM ThinkPad T41
leon@shpritsz:~$

I'll report back if it happens again.

Thanks, Leon.