Kernel instabilty on Medion MD41300 with Hyperthreading enabled / Mobile Pentium 4 HT 3.06Ghz

Are you booting with ht=on? We have hyperthreading disabled by default, so it should not be allowing ht to be enabled.

What exactly is the failure you are seeing with the -generic kernel and this HT system when HT is enabled in the BIOS?

The main problem is that you can not even install Ubuntu Edgy Eft. The whole system freezes permanently when HT is enabled on this particular Notebook. Ubuntu 6.06 had no problem with enabled HT on this system, so I guess it has something to do with the kernel-smp or multithreading.
So system freeze is the main problem. I had this freezes before with SuSE Linux and so I knew what to do to make the system work stable.

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Von: Bug 67110 <email address hidden>
Gesendet: 21.10.06 07:00:17
An: <email address hidden>
Betreff: [Bug 67110] Re: Kernel instabilty on Medion MD41300 with Hyperthreading enabled / Mobile Pentium 4 HT 3.06Ghz

Are you booting with ht=on? We have hyperthreading disabled by default,
so it should not be allowing ht to be enabled.

What exactly is the failure you are seeing with the -generic kernel and
this HT system when HT is enabled in the BIOS?

** Changed in: linux-source-2.6.17 (Ubuntu)
       Status: Unconfirmed => Needs Info

--
Kernel instabilty on Medion MD41300 with Hyperthreading enabled / Mobile Pentium 4 HT 3.06Ghz
https://launchpad.net/bugs/67110

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Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

I disabled Hyperthreading due to several issues with different kernels and distributions. So I did not test it with the latest Ubuntu Release or any new kernel (kernel 2.6.20 or above)
I also had a chat with the SMP Kernel and Medion MD41300 with one Linux Geek that worked for Medion. He told me that this problem is mostly caused by hardware and that a beta bios should solve it. But sadly this beta bios never got it to an final and so the problem still exist. It is also interesting that the freebsd version i tested here worked without any problem. The Linux Geek told me that on some devices it would help if you disable USB Legacy Support.
BTW I tested the Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop CD Live mode and it seems to work without crashes. But I had to disable USB Legacy Support for get it working.

I hope this helps a little bit ;)

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I experience the same problems on the MD41300 right now on Feisty. It freezes very often a day (sometimes even every few minutes).

I wonder if this could be solved by simply booting with "nosmp"? (or add "ht=off", because it shows 2 CPUs in System Monitor even you said HT is disabled by default)

I tried already disabling Hyperthreading in BIOS. Only one CPU showed up in System Monitor and everything worked fine but my wireless connection. It did not work anymore (Prism54/isl3890 card with ndiswrapper): it connects to the AP and then looses connection again and again. By the way, booting in Windows with HT disabled heats up my CPU very much when running mutliple programs.

I will try to reinstall (I am running Debian Etch by now for half a day and it seems stable, but I do not like it as much as Ubuntu) Ubuntu Feisty Fawn with Hyperthreading disabled, then add the "nosmp" option and turn HT on again. Hopefully everything will work fine then.

Does this seem to be a useful workaround to try? Thanks in advance.

Hi

yeah disabling ht would be good thing for now in feisty.
The integrated WLAN Chip (miniPCI) sits very near the cpu so when the
cpu gets to hot the card will broke down. (I experienced this
already :( )
What you also could try is disabling apic in the boot options.
Thats something I did for installing openSUSE 10.2. The customized
SuSE Kernel worked fine with HT enabled and disabling apic with the
boot option apic=off noapic .

I hope this will work for you too ;)

Am 17.08.2007 um 16:21 schrieb Uwe Trottmann:

> I experience the same problems on the MD41300 right now on Feisty. It
> freezes very often a day (sometimes even every few minutes).
>
> I wonder if this could be solved by simply booting with "nosmp"?
> (or add
> "ht=off", because it shows 2 CPUs in System Monitor even you said
> HT is
> disabled by default)
>
> I tried already disabling Hyperthreading in BIOS. Only one CPU
> showed up
> in System Monitor and everything worked fine but my wireless
> connection.
> It did not work anymore (Prism54/isl3890 card with ndiswrapper): it
> connects to the AP and then looses connection again and again. By the
> way, booting in Windows with HT disabled heats up my CPU very much
> when
> running mutliple programs.
>
> I will try to reinstall (I am running Debian Etch by now for half a
> day
> and it seems stable, but I do not like it as much as Ubuntu) Ubuntu
> Feisty Fawn with Hyperthreading disabled, then add the "nosmp" option
> and turn HT on again. Hopefully everything will work fine then.
>
> Does this seem to be a useful workaround to try? Thanks in advance.
>
> --
> Kernel instabilty on Medion MD41300 with Hyperthreading enabled /
> Mobile Pentium 4 HT 3.06Ghz
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/67110
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.

The 18 month support period for Edgy Eft 6.10 has reached it's end of life. As a result, we are closing the linux-source-2.6.17 Edgy Eft kernel task.

Hardy Heron 8.04 was recently released. It would be helpful if you could test the new release and verify if this is still an issue - http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . You should be able to test your bug using the LiveCD. Please let us know your results. Thanks.

I cannot guarantee that the issue is 100% gone, because I do not use this notebook anymore that often. But so far, I had no issues considering the instability and no freezes as well with Hardy. I would recommend to close this bug though.

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

Unfortunately this bug report is being closed because we received no response to the last inquiry for information. However, the Intrepid Ibex 8.10 Beta release was most recently announced - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/beta . If you are able to confirm this is still an issue with this most recent release please feel free to reopen this report. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks.

I still use this notebook and reinstalled Lucid, coming from Hardy. I once used to test an in between version with a live cd after enabling hyperthreading in the bios and I let it run the whole night. In the morning there wasn't a freeze, so I assumed it was fixed. After the installation of Lucid, when I was copying back my homedir, I had my first freeze again. So now I just disabled hyperthreading again. I'm going to try some tips from above again to see if they work now if I don't have any other problems anymore.

One of the other problems is that I had a couple of times the same kind of freeze when installing software using the Ubuntu Software Centre, when HT is disabled! No problems with apt-get. Never had it in Hardy when HT was disabled.

When booting, I have to press enter a couple of times, or otherwise the screen stays the same (black with blinking _ or the ubuntu splash screen). Same thing with shutting down. However, both have succeeded without pressing any key, but most of the time I must press a key a couple of times and then it continues to start up or shut down. Today I waited an hour and then it even wouldn't start up. I had to press the power key.

I tried Mint first, but I had more problems there. Everything wasn't snappy anymore. E.g. the turning cube was still fast, but for me it seems it had missing frames. Ubuntu works fine, but when playing a video file now, it is missing frames. It has been fine after install, but now it isn't.

In short: the bug is still there but there are more compared to Hardy.