clock source tsc makes gentoo boot slowly or perhaps megasas

Majed17 · Last edited by Majed17 on Fri Mar 27, 2015 7:35 pm; edited 1 time in total

Peace, while booting gento it says switched to clocksource tsc then megasas waits 180 secs for a command to complete and then the boot goes on and the system boot.
i read that one guy added clocksource=acpi to the grub.conf file in the kernel line but that seems not to work in gentoo.
do i need to recompile the kernel and if so where to disable tsc in menuconfig?

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 22841

Please post a timestamped dmesg around the point where you see the delay. I agree with krinn that it is more likely that some other problem slows the boot and the tsc message is the last normal message before the problem happens.

Majed17 · Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 6:36 am Post subject:

here is the output of dmesg starting with when the problem starts occuring:

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

Of course the problem comes from the megasas, what could be done:
- Make sure cable are firmly put (well, i think you should keep getting reset error if it was really that, but you don't tell us if you have such kind of problem coming up next in your dmesg)
- It could be problem with the driver itself, for this, a new kernel with newer driver would help, maybe check the driver doc for special case... it may be already covered
- It could be hardware: and even with that you can get help: updating firmware may fix the issue, but if lastest firmware did not, reporting this to the hw manufacturer may finally get an update fix firmware release out (many hw manufacturer release buggy product, they are not really unwilling to fix them, but if no people report the error, well, there's no error to fix then...)
If you can boot without any disk attach to it, try, and see if driver is still working bad at init, some disks can be problematic for some controller (you know just one little spec not respect and boom), this kind of problem may get fix by controller firmware fix again, or disk firmware fix.
- For your part you can look at possible issue youself, what i'm thinking there is looking at your interrupts that looks "suspicious" for me as:

steveL · Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 3:03 pm Post subject:

Great post, krinn. :)

If I could star it, I would.

Majed17 · Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2015 12:48 pm Post subject:

1. changed the topic name
2. i unplugged the harddisk and ran the gentoo admin cd from the usb stick, it hanged on megaraid, megaraid-mbox, raid-mm (capslock doesn't work nor did num lock) earler i installed gentoo from amd64 nomulti tab (if i remember correctly) the one with pure 64 artitechture.
3. tried to update the bois but it is the latest from 05/13/2013

what to do next?

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

without disk and having the usb stick test done you can limit to search to:
- drivers: bug in drivers, a more recent one (so a newer kernel) may solve it. A good hint may be looking at similar issue from other megasas users, if the problem is the driver, the issue should affect not only you.
- hardware: faulty hardware (a dead hardware is, well... dead), even everyone expect "dead" to be "not running", alas "dead" can mean working but not as it should (it is more easy for people with dead video cards that distort screen... as they see the card is dead, while the card is still "running").
- hardware: buggy -> look for firmware update ; if the bios update you speak of is the firmware update, it might be clue you should start thinking your device is "dead", you should query the card maker services if firmware doesn't solve it.

steveL · Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2015 8:24 pm Post subject:

Heh well I've linked here under Troubleshooting as I think the approach is excellent.

Majed17 · Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2015 6:46 am Post subject:

today i tried the gentoo live minimal cd and it paused on raid_mm several minutes then it resumed and booted with internet. the bios i looked for was the motherboard bois. it's hard to believ that the controller is dead as it worked fine on windows 8, it seems the drivers on gentoo are not great.

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

Still have a test you can do then.
Use a non gentoo livecd (as your windows test shown the hw may be fine), this will answer if it is the linux drivers or some gentoo made patches there?

-> if you find out it's the drivers, it might still be something the driver itself cannot fix, but the firmware of the device could, better look for firmware update (it won't kill you to have the latest one anyway).

-> if firmware doesn't fix it, then you can gives the hot potatoe to bugs.gentoo.org or kernel bugzilla.
While giving it to gentoo, this might help you get credits, as a gentoo dev will seek the issue with kernel dev ; it might also be better to report it yourself to kernel bug, as you have the faulty hw you will be the best to answer any questions they might asked about it.
You may open both, one to kernel and one in gentoo and link the gentoo one with the kernel one.
Remember you can query hw maker also (until prove just assume he is kind with its customers), he might not be aware of it and might fix it or might already be aware and will just gave you the solve.