Quick followup: OSS "sb" driver works fine without es1888_init().

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Bob Tracy          |  "I was a beta tester for dirt.  They never did
rct@frus.com       |   get all the bugs out." - Steve McGrew on /.
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Okay.  I finally got everything tested on my Miata.  Unless I missed 
something, the es1888_init routine only gets compiled in with 
CONFIG_ALPHA_MIATA.  As I've been using the debian generic kernel (i.e., 
CONFIG_ALPHA_GENERIC), I have never relied on this routine for anything.

I did discover, however, when I compiled my own kernel (2.6.25-rc5) with 
CONFIG_ALPHA_MIATA, things stopped working.  Specifically, I no longer 
got any interupts (with or without the es1888_init patch and with or 
without the alternative es188xx interupt patch) associated with either 
the builtin sound card (es1888) or the IDE controller (CMD646).

With CONFIG_ALPHA_GENERIC I only get one interupt with the es18xx driver 
unless I applied to "alternative interupt" handling code.  Further, 
sometime between 2.6.14 and 2.6.16, mpg321 (using the alsa driver) 
started generating "Bad page state in process 'mpg321' ... Trying to fix 
it up, but a reboot is needed" kernel messages.

The machine would continue to operate okay though.  However, somewhere 
between 2.6.16 and 2.6.24, it also started crashing very shortly 
thereafter, giving the following backtrace: free_pages_check, 
free_hot_cold_pages, put_pages, free_page_and_swap_cache, unmap_cmas, 
unmap_region, default_wake_function, do_munmap, sys_munmap, entSys.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!  -Tyson

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Not really no. A lot of data has come in by now and I'll try to sort through 
it trying to distill some sense out of it all later but throwing my hands up 
in the air and finding some older Alpha system to urinate on sounds about as 
good an idea as any at the moment.

Rene.
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Sorry for the multiple copies; my ISP is crashing again.

Rene.
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And here I was, thinking you were giving us a *really* strong hint that
you would like one of us to ship you an Alpha to play with :-).

-- 
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Bob Tracy          |  "I was a beta tester for dirt.  They never did
rct@frus.com       |   get all the bugs out." - Steve McGrew on /.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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[ message continues ]

Not really no. A lot of data has come in by now and I'll try to sort through 
it trying to distill some sense out of it all later but throwing my hands up 
in the air and finding some older Alpha system to urinate on sounds about as 
good an idea as any at the moment.

Rene.
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Not really no. A lot of data has come in by now and I'll try to sort through 
it trying to distill some sense out of it all later but throwing my hands up 
in the air and finding some older Alpha system to urinate on sounds about as 
good an idea as any at the moment.

Rene.
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The current arch/alpha/kernel/Makefile build logic shows es1888.o built
as part of CONFIG_ALPHA_GENERIC, but if that option isn't enabled, then
enabling any of the following configuration options will cause es1888.o
to be built:

CONFIG_ALPHA_DP264
CONFIG_ALPHA_SHARK

Interesting.  I *seldom* use the Debian generic kernel.  It's available,
and I install updated versions when they are released, but all of my
testing has been with kernels built from the standard kernel.org sources

This is consistent with what I remember you reporting when we were
looking at this back in the 2.6.14 timeframe.  I was reporting the "bad
page state" problems with 2.6.22-rc6 and -rc7.  In my case, the trigger
was a different application, but only happened when snd_es18xx was
loaded.  Hugh Dickins suggested it was a regression introduced in
2.6.15 that I had managed to successfully avoid tripping on :-).  The
analysis went something like this:

sound/isa/es18xx.c:
	snd_pcm_lib_preallocate_pages_for_all(pcm, SNDRV_DMA_TYPE_DEV, ...
led us to sound/core/memalloc.c:
	res = dma_alloc_coherent(dev, PAGE_SIZE << pg, dma, gfp_flags);
where __GFP_COMP was carefully included in gfp_flags to avoid the
kinds of problems I was seeing (replacing the pre-2.6.15 use of
PageReserved).

Hugh said we could blame him or Nick for removing the special
PageReserved usage, or the Alpha for ignoring gfp_flags in the
following:

  #define dma_alloc_coherent(dev, size, addr, gfp)      \
                pci_alloc_consistent(alpha_gendev_to_pci(dev), size, addr)

The workaround (until the official patch was issued) was a small patch
against arch/alpha/kernel/pci_iommu.c:pci_alloc_consistent() that
replaced "gfp_t gfp = GFP_ATOMIC;" with "gfp_t gfp = GFP_ATOMIC|__GFP_COMP;".
That eliminated the "bad page state" errors for me, and I don't recall
what the official patch was.

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Bob Tracy          |  "I was a beta tester for dirt.  They never ...
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The official patch has just been uploaded to the -mm kernel.  Get it at:

http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/alpha-fix-alsa-dma-mmap-crash.patch

It fixed up quite a number of sound playing applications that were  
causing kernel oops on my newer PWS600au (the older one still has  
problems that are of a completely different nature) and also fixed use  
of an M-Audio Revolution audio card on my XP1000.

The repeated small passages at the end of a short sound file still  
occurs with the es18xx driver on the newer PWS600au (and to a lesser  
extent on the Compaq XP1000).  Other sound drivers (cmipci, ice1724)  
do not exhibit the same anomalous symptoms so the problem is probably  
in the es18xx driver.

The older PWS600au fails to play sound at all and exhibits the  
behaviour you described in a recent message (machine gun like noises  
and the interrupts don't clock up at all) with the es18xx driver. I  
tried to put the C-Media audio card (which uses the cmipci driver)  
into this machine, but SRM reports on powerup that there is an  
"illegal" card installed (I hope the police don't turn up at my door)  
and that it must be removed to continue booting!!!  I tried setting  
pci_device_override to 1 in SRM, but that didn't help.  So I can't  
verify whether this is an es18xx specific problem or a more general  
alsa problem.

Now that the crashes due to "bad page state" errors are solved on both  
of my PWS600aus, maybe I should start re-applying the es18xx interrupt  
type patches that Tyson, et al., suggested and see if they now make a  
difference.  I will not be able to do this before the weekend.

Cheerz
Michael.

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