Loud beep when installing feisty-desktop-i386 on DQ965COEKR motherboard

[Marc Tardif]

When installing feisty herd 2 for i386 desktop on a DQ965COEKR motherboard, there is a loud continuous beep which occurs during the boot process. This beep persists when the desktop comes up and then persists while running the installation. The beep finally stops when rebooting after the installation and never beeps again when running the system.

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto (fabbione)]

Kyle this is a regression bug from our certification lab. Please make sure to address them before the next milestone.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

This doesn't sound like a kernel bug. The beep is triggered by userspace, and it sounds like something there is hanging.

Is it a constant beep, or pulsed?

Is it reproducible, does it always happen in the livecd?

[Ampinder (ajaysingh99)]

I have reproduced the sound, it happens from the live cd and it's constant pulsed sound.

I am adding the result of the ps auxww command.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

Is this beep coming from the PC speaker (keyboard type beep) or from the sound card?

Can you F6 at the boot screen and remove "quiet splash" from the boot options and see at which point in the kernel messages the beeping starts?

Thanks

[Ampinder (ajaysingh99)]

As you mentioned, I removed the "quiet splash" at boot screen (F6) and start the the installation. I did the complete installation and got no sound coming from the machine. So, to be sure, I redid the test by adding the "quiet splash" and the sound started to come back.

I verified the machine, there is no sound card, the sound is coming directly from the machine. The sound starts coming as soon as Ubuntu finishes to load and that the 2 icons appears "Examples" and "Install"

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

Moving milestone forward.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

I can't understand usplash being the cause, but there's clear evidence that it is at least involved somehow.

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Basically impossible to debug without access to the hardware. Does the same happen if you boot without splash and then run usplash from the console?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

So this could be:

  (a) PC speaker, eg. driven by an interrupt timer that has not been reset.
  (b) Sound chip/card (happening when we play "dum-di-dum")
  (c) Video hardware being driven out of spec
  (d) Processor VRM idling (high pitched) when the process isn't doing anything
  (e) Server-class hardware front-panel alarm
  (f) PSU/Fan/Temperature/RAM failure alert

Marc: are you able to tell where (physically) the sound is coming from. If this is coming from the certification team, I'd guess at this being server class hardware which is likely to have some sort of out-of-band or front-panel monitoring display (for example for fans/redundant PSU failure).

The only one I can think of this might be usplash related would be the video timings and even that isn't usplash directly.

When /precisely/ does the sound start (you mentioned when the desktop icons appear).

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

Moving milestone forward

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

Moving milestone forward.

Marc, please answer Matthew's question in the bug report

[Marc Tardif (cr3)]

This problem has not occured since Herd 5. Please let me know if you would like me to test again with Herd 2 in an attempt to actually isolate the problem. Otherwise, this bug could be closed.

[Marc Tardif (cr3)]

My mistake, I had attempted to reproduce the problem with the alternate install when the problem was clearly with the desktop install.

To answer Matthew's question, here is what I tried:

1. Booted from the desktop installation without the splash option and there was no loud beep.
2. Attempted to change to another console using ctrl-alt-F[1-6] and there were only black screens, no prompt or anything. So, I went back to the desktop with ctrl-alt-F7.
3. Opened a terminal window and ran the usplash command. The screen went black and then white. However, there was no loud beep.

By the way, when booting without splash, I noticed the following error message:

PCI: BIOS Bug: MCFG area at f000000 is not E820-reserved
PCI: Not using MMCONFIG

Anything else I should try?

[Robert Butler (rob-thebutlerfamily)]

Hi, I just wanted to confirm this bug during an install of Herd 5, also on an Intel MB, a DG965PZ.

I haven't had a chance to run through the debugging tests listed here, however I can confirm that it happened during three boots of the livecd, but no longer exists when booting from an installed system.

I'll try to test it again tonight and will report back on the results.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Could you attach the contents of '/var/log/dmesg' after boot. Also, when /precisely/ does the beep start (eg. in seconds after CD splash disappears).

[Robert Butler (rob-thebutlerfamily)]

OK, reran the test last night, it occured as mentioned. The beep is from the PC speaker and appears to start when x is probed/started, eg, about 3-5 seconds before the x cursor appears (there's a screen flash, goes back to the status bar, then x starts). I didn't time it last night, so I can't tell you how many seconds.

The beep stops as soon as the system starts to shutdown, eg, select shutdown/restart the screen goes black and then it stops.

The beep does NOT occur when using the 'safe' startup (I forget the wording). I did see the same "PCI: BIOS Bug: MCFG area at f000000 is not E820-reserved" error when using that method.

I'll try and run through it again tonight and send the dmesg log.

[Marc Tardif (cr3)]

Paul, the problem occurs immediately after the status bar disappears. Relative to the CD splash, this is over 60 seconds so I'm not sure that's a relevant measure considering time may vary significantly depending on hardware at that point.

As requested, here is the dmesg log attached below...

[Robert Butler (rob-thebutlerfamily)]

Attached below is my dmesg log, the beep started at about 65 seconds after boot.

The hardware is a DG965PZ with a Core2/6600 and 4GB booting from a Plextor 755SA.

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

Bringing milestone forward

[Jeroen Maris (jealma)]

I experienced this beeping also in the installation of Kubuntu Gutsy Tribe 2 Desktop and Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 3 Desktop. Is this the place to report this, or should I file a new bug?

[Risto H. Kurppa (risto.kurppa)]

Confirmed on Gutsy stable (updated from Feisty), installed on a HP XE3-gc -laptop. (i386)

It starts to make the noise pretty early on the startup (during splash).

I removed 'splash' from grub, it started it only in the login screen. Then stopped, and started, stopped and started again and kept making the noise all the way.

When shutting down, it stops when around 75% of the shutdown is done (the progress bar).

Restarted once again, put acpi=force, sound's gone and everything works..

weird.. Hope this helps you. The laptop is not mine, I don't have proper access to it so I might have some difficulties to provide more information dmesg attached from a run where it made the noise.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Can this bug be reproduced with Hardy?

[Niels Egberts (nielsegberts)]

I think I have the same problem on my laptop in Interpid, Hardy is working fine. I always start my laptop without splash because the sound/beep is very loud. I think its defenetely the speaker on the motherboard.

Kernel version 2.6.26-2 did not have this problem, 2.6.26-3 does.

[Niels Egberts (nielsegberts)]

I'm on a Dell D830 laptop.

[Niels Egberts (nielsegberts)]

My bug has been fixed with the latest usplash (v 0.5.22).

[Niels Egberts (nielsegberts)]

Too bad, when I started my laptop today it did it again...

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Niels - I am under the impression that this happens with every boot not just when installing is that correct?

[Niels Egberts (nielsegberts)]

With my bug it happens every boot if I have splash enabled. I can't say if I have the same motherboard in my latitude D830. So maybe my and this bug are not related but I have not found another bug report that is more similar to my problem, and I don't think I've got enough information to open a new bug.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Niels Egberts : Can you attach debug files so we can have a complete description of your system hardware and error logs as described in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUsplash ?

The more important would be the files created by these commands in a terminal :

sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.txt
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst > menu.lst
cat /etc/usplash.conf > usplash.conf
uname -a > uname-a.txt

[Niels Egberts (nielsegberts)]

I've made a new bug-report that you can find here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usplash/+bug/253399

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

With Marc's help we just tested installing Intrepid Beta i386 desktop on the system with the DQ965COEKR motherboard and this bug is no longer an issue. usplash is version 0.5.23. I'll go ahead and close this report. Thanks.