timer broken (was Re: fc5 hangs)

[Keith G. Robertson-Turner]

David L wrote:

>> The timer interrupt is incrementing very slowly.  Instead of 1000
>> Hz it's incrementing about once or twice per minute.  What would
>> cause that?  I had ntpd running, but I killed it.

There's your answer - kernel bug specific to your hardware.

Try downgrading your kernel to an earlier release, and see if the timer
(and other issues) disappear.

Incidentally, during a recent kernel compile, I noticed that 1000Hz is 
not the default setting in the config; I think it's 250Hz IIRC, for some 
reason.

I usually avoid kernel updates completely if all the hardware I have
already works with the current kernel. It also means I can avoid
rebooting and losing uptime. At the very least, I keep the previous
kernel for weeks, maybe months, to be sure I don't fall prey to an
upgrade gotcha.

Beats me why features that work in previous releases of the kernel,
don't work in subsequent versions. You'd have thought it should be the
other way round. Stuff like that, seems to happen only too often with 
the kernel.

Anyway, have a go - and good luck.

-- 
K.
http://slated.org - Slated, Rated & Blogged

Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux) on sky, running kernel 2.6.16-1.2122_FC5
  02:00:16 up 8 days, 21:40,  1 user,  load average: 0.13, 0.04, 0.01