[mpeg2] Re: Any news on the lockup problem on insmod (was VIA problem)

[Kees Cook <cook@cpoint.net>]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 04:21:22PM +0100, Frank Siegert wrote:
> thing seems a bit strange as the lockup happens upon the read() call where
> the system loads in the microcode file, however this is only an assumption,
> as sometimes the read goes through and then it locks up later (1 out of 10
> the read() call works). It is quite hard to analyse when the total roundtrip
> needs several minutes per try due to the fsck of the file system and all you
> have are some printk() outputs from within kfir.o. 
> 
> Any ideas?

When I was doing my testing and debugging, what I did was started adding
lots of

printk("I'm at such-and-such a place\n");

in the code where it locks up.  To get around the fsck trouble, I would
just boot to single user mode ("linux single" at the LILO prompt) and when
it finished booting, I'd unmount any filesystems I wasn't using, and then
remount my remaining filesystems read-only, so that a crash wouldn't cause
a fsck:

mount -o remount,ro /

The single user mode part is important so that nothing has any
open-for-writing inodes.  Also, if you have multiple filesystems, remount
"/" last, so that "mount" can keep updating "/etc/mtab".

It's still a lot of cycle time, but it's MUCH better than waiting for a
fsck.

When I was done, it was my USB *drivers* that caused a problem for me
under Intel, even though nothing changed in my lspci output.

--  
Kees Cook					@outflux.net