Re: Linux 2.6.29-rc6

From: Jesper Krogh
Date: Tue Mar 10 2009 - 15:43:17 EST


Thomas Gleixner wrote:
On Mon, 9 Mar 2009, Linus Torvalds wrote:
On Mon, 9 Mar 2009, Jesper Krogh wrote:
First boot.
[ 0.000000] ref_freq: 2311825 pit_freq: 2310386
Second boot:
[ 0.000000] ref_freq: 2311803 pit_freq: 2310190
Third boot:
[ 0.000000] ref_freq: 2311824 pit_freq: 2310080
Fourth boot:
[ 0.000000] ref_freq: 2311831 pit_freq: 2310130
It's really quite impressively stable, but the fast-PIT calibration frequency is reliably about 3/4 of a promille low. Or, put another way, the TSC difference over the pit calibration is just a _tad_ too small compared to the value we'd expect if that loop of pit_expect_msb() would really run at the expected delay of a 1.193182MHz clock divided by 256.

And it's stable in that it really always seems to be off by a very similar amount. It's not moving around very much.

I also wonder why it seems to happen mainly just to _you_. There's absolutely nothing odd in your system, neither a slow CPU or anything else that would stand out.

Grr. Very annoyingly non-obvious.

Indeed. One hint is in the slow calibration path. 3 of 4 boots have:

[ 0.000000] TSC: PIT calibration matches PMTIMER. 2 loops

So the slow calibration path detects some disturbance.

Jesper, can you please apply the following patch instead of Johns and
provide the output for a couple of boots? The output is:

Fast TSC calibration using PIT
tsc 43425305 tscmin 624008 tscmax 632610

First boot:
[ 0.000000] Fast TSC calibration using PIT
[ 0.000000] tsc 34202223 tscmin 474069 tscmax 500664
Second boot:
Here I didnt get above messages.. http://krogh.cc/~jesper/dmesg-boot2.txt
Third boot:
[ 0.000000] Fast TSC calibration using PIT
[ 0.000000] tsc 34199856 tscmin 470321 tscmax 502182
Forth boot:
[ 0.000000] Fast TSC calibration using PIT
[ 0.000000] tsc 34202008 tscmin 475510 tscmax 501501

The second one is really strange.. is'nt it?

While booting up I saw this one on the serial console..
root@quad12:~# hwclock --systohc
Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method.
Use the --debug option to see the details of our search for an access method.
root@quad12:~# hwclock --systohc --debug
hwclock from util-linux-ng 2.13.1
hwclock: Open of /dev/rtc failed, errno=2: No such file or directory.
No usable clock interface found.
Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method.

Jesper
--
Jesper

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