Argh, Stray interrupts 2006

[Danial Thom]

--- Matthew Dillon <dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> 
> :Thats not really a solution as I don't want a
> :system thats processing 100s of interrupts per
> :second for no reason. I previously reported
> that
> :these were gone, but now that I put another
> card
> :in the box (a dual port intel ethernet),
> they're
> :back.
> :
> :I know I've been told that its a bios
> :configuration problem, however I don't get
> stray
> :interrupts if I pop a FreeBSD disk on the
> exact
> :same hardware. So why is it a misconfiguration
> in
> :DFLY but not in FreeBSD?
> :
> :DT
> 
>     I like how you always twist things so it's
> somehow our fault.
> 
>     The BIOS/MB issue is that some motherboards
> route all system interrupts
>     to a single PIC IRQ line in order to allow
> the BIOS to implement things 
>     like USB keyboard support and NetBoot
> during boot.  The chipset 
>     manufacturers do not publish how to turn it
> off, and on some motherboards
>     there is no way to turn it off short of
> turning off the PIC itself,
>     and even then it is sometimes not possible
> to turn it off.
> 
>     It might be possible to bypass the issue
> using the SMP + APIC_IO option,
>     but chipset vendors have also had the keen
> idea of doing the same sort
>     of shit for IOAPIC interrupts too.  Some of
> Intel's own chipsets completely
>     break IOAPIC pin masking by causing the
> chip to route to a default
>     vector if a pin is masked.  Sometimes it is
> possible to bypass
>     the problem by not using IOAPIC interrupt
> masking (and sometimes it isn't),
>     and sometimes it is possible to bypass the
> problem by masking the 
>     pin representing the default vector.  Or
> not.
> 
>     FreeBSD has recently moved away from using
> the PIC alltogether, primarily
>     by using the LAPIC timer instead of the
> i2854.  I think its a good idea,
>     but it represents quite a chunk of work. 
> It may or may not solve this
>     particular issue (it is just one of many
> related to broken BIOSes and
>     motherboards that pop up).
> 
>     In anycase, if you want to solve the
> problem the source code is right
>     there, start coding!  You seem to want to
> simplify problems down to
>     one-liner's, and blame us for all your woes
> in the process, but the
>     reality is that it is a far more complex
> issue then you seem to want to
>     believe.

You can call it "twisting", but your OS is based
on Freebsd 4.8, and it doesn't happen with
FreeBSD 4.9. So unless its something that they
fixed in 4.9, its likely something that you folks
changed or do differently. In fact I've never
seen so MANY stray interrupts on any box on any
OS in the 23 years or so that I've been using one
un*x or another. Not to be negative, but those
are the facts.

My view is that its the responsibility of the
programmer to mask hardware quirks and bios
"bugs". You don't "explain" that an ethernet
controller has a bug so it locks up all the time;
you figure out a way to make it so that it either
doesn't lock up or so that it is restarts as
tranparently as possible. Lazy programmers
complain about how difficult it is to do things,
and good ones come up with solutions. Its fairly
clear that whatever the bug is, you've made it
worse, or removed some work-around. As more and
more people use DFLY, you'll spend more and more
time explaining to people that its not your
fault. Its probably less effort in the long run
to just figure something out that corrects it.

Turning on SMP stopped the stray irq messages. I
get one stray IRQ message immediately after
loading the acpi.ko module, and then no more. If
you think of something that might fix it in UP
mode, I'm happy to try it out.

Is there a performance cost of running an smp
kernel on a UP machine? I don't intend to run
DFLY UP anyway, but just interested in knowing if
it shuts off the SMP modes when only 1 cpu is
detected.

DT

Its been suggested that I turn acpi off, and
there doesn't seem to be a toggle in the bios,
and dfly insists on loading the module

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