Gutsy Tribe 4 x86_64 - Thinkpad T61 Bugs

Bug #131406 reported by Mike Richards
12
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
linux-source-2.6.22 (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Here is a long list of hardware-related bugs that affect Gutsy Tribe 4 x86_64 on a Thinkpad T61 with the following configuration:

- Intel GMA X3100 graphics
- Intel 3945 wireless
- 15" screen w/ 1680x1050 resolution

1. The initial install from the live CD graphical installer does not work if the laptop is in SATA AHCI mode. You have to go into the BIOS and set the SATA controller to "Compatibility" mode or else you get a "can't find tty" error. (After Ubuntu is intalled you can set the controller back to AHCI mode.)

2. The initial install from the live CD graphical installer hangs with a blank tan screen after gdm loads. It is clear that gdm is running, but the desktop never actually loads. The solution is to (a) switch to a console (Ctrl-Alt-F1), (b) run "sudo bash", (c) type "killall gdm", and (d) type "/etc/init.d/gdm start". Note that "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" does not work for step (c) -- you have to run "killall gdm".

3. Default fonts are too bold above 8 or 9px (the exact number depends on the font). This probably has something to do with the fact that this is a high-resolution screen (129dpi) because I have not heard people with normal-resolution screens complaining about it. You can easily see this by running gnome-specimen and gradually stepping up the font size. At some point (usually around 8-9px) the font will turn bold.

4. Suspend has major problems. Suspend-to-disk always hangs, and the only suspend-to-ram command I've gotten to work at all is "s2ram -f -a1". About half the time s2ram never resumes, and usually when it fails to resume it just shows a blank console with "Linux!" written in the upper left. However, even when it does resume to the desktop, it invariably does something very odd: It *loses* a processor and a half. Before running s2ram you can do a "cat /proc/cpuinfo" and see two processors running at ~1800MHz, but after resuming from a s2ram, the same command will only show a single processor running at ~900MHz, and any further suspends will completely hang the system. Very bizarre.

5. After a while of running in X mode, it becomes impossible to switch to a console and see anything. I've not figured out any pattern here, but this is what eventually happens after a few hours: You do a Ctrl-Alt-F1 (or F2 or whatever) to go from X to a console, and all you see is a blank screen. The console is actually there and running -- you just cannot see it. You can log in blind and type commands into the console and they'll run just find; you just cannot see what you're doing.

If I come across more T61 hardware-related bugs I'll append them to this entry.

Revision history for this message
Marius Gedminas (mgedmin) wrote :
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I have a Thinkpad T61 with the following configuration:

- Intel GMA X3100 graphics
- Intel 3945 wireless
- 15" screen w/ 1280x800 resolution

I've encountered all of the bugs mentioned in the original report, and some more.

1. If you leave the SATA controller in AHCI mode, Gutsy won't see the CD/DVD drive at all.

2. I installed my system from Gutsy Tribe 3 Alternative CD (because I didn't figure out the SATA fix), and in the middle of the install process the screen went blank. I think this happened when the xresprobe package got installed. I had to finish the installation by hand (essentially pressing Enter whenever the CD spun down).

3. I think the font issue is DPI related, as I didn't notice anything on my 100 dpi laptop panel.

4. s2ram -a1 does the equivalent of passing acpi_sleep=s3_bios on the kernel's command line, by echoing 1 to /proc/sys/kernel/acpi_video_flags prior to suspending. This is needed to get the backlight back on after a resume. The loss of the second CPU is caused by a kernel panic on resume:

platonas kernel: [ 3022.060000] Oops: 0000 [#1]
platonas kernel: [ 3022.060000] SMP
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] CPU: 1
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] EIP: 0060:[phys_startup_32+535810156/-1073741824] Not tainted VLI
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] EFLAGS: 00010082 (2.6.22-9-generic #1)
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] EIP is at 0x1fffd06c
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] eax: c043c388 ebx: 00000005 ecx: fffff000 edx: 1fffd067
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] esi: c043c388 edi: 00000001 ebp: 00000001 esp: c18d9f30
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] ds: 007b es: 007b fs: 00d8 gs: 0000 ss: 0068
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] Process swapper (pid: 0, ti=c18d8000 task=c18d0a40 task.ti=c18d8000)
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] Stack: c0271fdd 00000001 01000000 00000000 c01018e1 00000280 00000320 c01180df
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] 00000001 e0002073 c0438000 ffffffff c010b60d 00050014 c0371e40 00000001
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] c100897b 0138a000 00000001 01000000 00000000 00000001 c0116e45 00000001
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] Call Trace:
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [dmi_check_system+77/112] dmi_check_system+0x4d/0x70
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [calibrate_delay+17/1840] calibrate_delay+0x11/0x730
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [setup_local_APIC+655/672] setup_local_APIC+0x28f/0x2a0
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [cpu_init+413/592] cpu_init+0x19d/0x250
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [start_secondary+181/896] start_secondary+0xb5/0x380
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [cpu_exit_clear+25/64] cpu_exit_clear+0x19/0x40
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [<f884a731>] acpi_processor_idle+0x0/0x41f [processor]
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] [cpu_idle+172/224] cpu_idle+0xac/0xe0
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] =======================
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] Code: Bad EIP value.
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] EIP: [phys_startup_32+535810156/-1073741824] 0x1fffd06c SS:ESP 0068:c18d9f30
platonas kernel: [ 3022.064000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!

The same panic occurs if I try suspend to disk, but during suspend rather th...

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Revision history for this message
Marius Gedminas (mgedmin) wrote :

> 12. Once during boot time there was a 30 second pause after which
> usplash disappeared and I got a scary kernel message about an
> exception on ata1.00. I had SATA set to AHCI in the BIOS at that
> time.

This is https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/131633

Revision history for this message
Marius Gedminas (mgedmin) wrote :

> The loss of the second CPU is caused by a kernel panic on resume

This appears to be https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/129226

Revision history for this message
Anthony Liguori (anthony-codemonkey) wrote :

The font issue is covered by https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/118745

I don't think this is the right way to report bugs. You should report a separate bug entry for each bug and use a common tag. Please considering marking this bug to invalid and creating individual bug reports.

Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

Anthony is correct, every bug should have a separate bug report. As each bug usually deals with separate packages, which have separate maintainers and each bug may have it's own life cycle.

Revision history for this message
Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara) wrote :

Hi Mike, now that the 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu is out I'm wondering how many of these issues still exist. Could you please download and try the new version of Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . However, as both Brian and Anthony pointed out, if an issue still exists please open a new report and remember to keep it to one bug per report. It may also be the case the the issue has already been reported. If this is the case, please feel free to add any useful information to the existing report. We really do value your help and feedback. I encourage you to please keep reporting any bugs that you come across in existing and future Ubuntu releases. Thanks again.

Changed in linux-source-2.6.22:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara) wrote :

After thinking some more, I really don't like flipping the status to "Invalid" and losing the information Mike reported. Mike, if you do notice that an issue(s) you reported here still exists with the 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon release, can you please choose the one issue you'd like this report to be about. That way we'll narrow down this report to focus on one bug. And if more than one issue exists, please refer to my previous comment. Thanks.

Changed in linux-source-2.6.22:
status: Invalid → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara) wrote :

This bug report is being closed because we received no reponse to the last inquiry for information. Please reopen it if this is still an issue in the current Gutsy Gibbon release. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Please don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future, we really appreciate it. Thanks again!

Changed in linux-source-2.6.22:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
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