On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 19:24 -0500, Ross Vandegrift wrote: > Package: linux-image-2.6.26-2-486 > Version: 2.6.26-19lenny2 > Severity: critical > Justification: breaks the whole system > > After upgrading linux-image-2.6.26-2-486 from 17lenny1 to 19lenny2, I > started experiencing 100% reproducable system lockups on a VIA C7 > system. No errors in the logs, no oops, no BUG, nothing - just a hard > lock. No keyboard LED response and no sysrq functionality worked. > > Sometimes the system wouldn't complete the boot process without > freezing. Sometimes it would last three minutes or so before > freezing. I could reproduce the lockup with "cat /dev/zero > file". > Every time, within 10 seconds, the system would freeze. > > After a lot of trial, error, and searching, I discovered that the > e_powersaver module was being loaded and the lockups went away if I > unloaded it.
It is cpufrequtils, not the kernel, that selects which cpufreq driver to load, so I will assign this bug to cpufrequtils. However, we will reconsider whether this module should be built at all. > The kernel build help text indicates that the module shouldn't ever be > used, and is highly dangerous: > > This adds the CPUFreq driver for VIA C7 processors. However, this > driver does not have any safeguards to prevent operating the CPU out > of spec and is thus considered dangerous. Please use the regular ACPI > cpufreq driver, enabled by CONFIG_X86_ACPI_CPUFREQ. [...] This warning has been added recently. The kernel team is not in possession of a time machine. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Any smoothly functioning technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
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