[Discuss] Issues with new Linux computer mostly addressed

[Cy Schubert]

In message <4E6AE5F528744E479C4F2AC326FFF840024809C57E at EX10MBX01.intra.c
amosun.
bc.ca>, "Deryk Barker (Honorary Colleague)" writes:
> Alan, unless things have changed recently, the reset button simply asserts a 
> reset line/signal on the bus (not that PCIe is really a bus any more).
>
> If the OS is totally locked up and not even sampling the bus lines...

There is no sampling of the bus. The reset pin on the CPU is also 
asserted when the bus is.

~cy

>
> -------
> Deryk Barker, Faculty Emeritus
> Computer Science Department
> Camosun College, Victoria BC
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Discuss [discuss-bounces at vlug.org] on behalf of Alan W. Irwin [Alan.W.I
> rwin1234 at gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2018 10:34 AM
> To: discuss at vlug.org
> Subject: Re: [Discuss] Issues with new Linux computer mostly addressed
>
> After 3 days of up time, I just experienced another lock up of our new
> computer for kernel version 4.16.12.  And this lock up was so harsh
> that the reset button gave no response (which I don't understand
> because I thought that button was pure hardware and not anything to do
> with the Linux kernel or BIOS at all).  As a result, I had to
> completely power down the computer, pause for several seconds and
> reboot to gain control of it again.  Furthermore, my recent experience
> is these lock ups go away if the AMD RX 550 graphics card is not used.
> This is consistent with commentary I have just found that was in
> response to
> <https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Best-Linux-4.17-Features
> >.
> To summarize that commentary (accessible at the end of the article),
> it appears there is an overall issue of immature Linux kernel support
> for several recent generations of AMD graphics cards which can cause
> lock ups, and these issues will only be resolved by kernel version
> 4.17.x where x is large enough to work out the bugs in the
> just-released 4.17.0.
>
> Given this bad Linux situation with recent generations of AMD graphics
> cards, I am frankly surprised that Michael Larabel, the Phoronix guy
> who writes many articles lauding Linux support for AMD graphics is not
> saying anything about how long (more than a year for the RX 550 and
> longer for some older generations) it has been taking to resolve these
> issues.  Anyhow, I naively trusted his positive Linux review of the RX
> 550 that he wrote a year ago just when that card first became
> available for sale, and now I am paying the price.
>
> I am confident that at least in the long term these issues will be
> resolved since AMD builds their amdgpu-pro driver for Linux right on
> top of the open-source amdgpu driver.  So it is in their direct
> financial interest to make sure these issues go away.  But the
> severity of this recent lock up has convinced me to go back to my
> strategy of bypassing this card (using a different computer to display
> results in X terminal mode) until Linux kernel support for modern AMD
> graphics finally matures.
>
> Alan
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
>
> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
>
> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
> implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
> Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
> software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
> (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
> and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
> __________________________
>
> Linux-powered Science
> __________________________
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at vlug.org
> http://vlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_vlug.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at vlug.org
> http://vlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_vlug.org
>

-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com>
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org

	The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.