disabling irq 3, halt
Posts: 13
I've had this error for as long as I've had Linux installed and have needed to boot using a live cd.
irq 3:nobody cared!
handlers:
[] (ide_intr+0x0/0x190)
disabling IRQ #3
Neither kernel 2.4 or 2.6 work. My normal distro is Debian and kernel 2.4 works fine while I've never been able to get 2.6 to work, so it seems like 2.4 would work under Mepis. Knoppix doesn't work any better, only it maybe has a different error.
It wouldn't be a problem if I didn't need to access my secondary scsi drive, which is where Linux is installed. My sata drive relies on a sata controller host card, which is most likely where the problem lies. When I unplug the sata cable, Mepis boots without a hitch. My primary (Windows) drive is ide.
Thanks for any help. It would be nice to finally resolve this.
/root must be on IDE or SATA drive
Posts: 959
Have a look at Warrens post on Hardware under the Drives Heading
http://www.mepis.org/node/1466
If you do some clever partitioning, you could put / into your IDE drive, you only need 4Gb, but I use between 6-8Gb, and leave the rest of the space to windows. The SCSI drive could be formatted as FAT32 and you could MOVE your My Documents, Desktop, Favorites and Start Menu foldewrs from the IDE drive to the SCSI drive, and link to them from the Mepis partition so that no data is saved there except for emails and a few other bits and bobs.
I set up my partitions to do something similar, but I delete some of the original folders in my /home/name folder and replace them with symlinks to the equivalent folder in my fat32 drive. This way, my important data is fully accessible from either windows or Linux, but I generallt tend to leave windows alone and show my setup to people interested in migrating to linux and it totally kills a good portion of their FUD
Sorry - I went off on a rave again.
Mike P
sata_sil
Posts: 13
Thanks for the quick reply. I've yet to receive one at Knoppix's forums. 
The driver for my sata card is sata_sil. The card can be found @ http://www.koutech.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=169 and supports linux.
I've tried using various boot parameters, such as pci=noacpi, noacpi, acpi=force, noirqdebug=1, pci=bios, pci=biosirq, acpi=noirq. No success. I know what most of these do but not all of them. I've read that noirqdebug hangs "nobody cared" messages and it does. The purpose of this command is to disable irq-disabling but what the name implies is that it just disables the debug, so I don't know.
If I could find a way to disable irq-disabling, it seems like it would work.
I've read that updating the bios has worked for some people. My bios are pre-2000. I downloaded the HP bios (2002) earlier but wasn't able to mount the floppy (mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy) to write them to. It's a self-extracting .exe file, so I had to use wine.
The distro I'm trying to fix (Debian, kernel 2.4.27) has always booted with the sata card just fine. It shows it using irq #3 and says it's sharing it with another device (?).
@m_pav: Thank you for your help. However, my Windows drive is only 30GB (mostly used) and my Linux drive is 80GB (fully partitioned), so this works nicely. Also, I never use Windows and don't know how I'd get my root partition onto the ide drive.
My apologies for the length of this reply. I want to be as informative as possible.
Thanks
sata_sil
Posts: 2280
More info does help. These kinds of things can have so many causes its kind of a search and eliminate mission. One think comes to mind though . The bios as you describe is a likely candidate that deserves a little look see. If your bios has an auto configure irq section you might try setting it to a manual selection and turning off plug and play. Manually selecting irq settings to reasonable standards and shadowing the bios allso might be the answer its just a try and see situation caused by the seemingly endless variations and types. Good luck! And hang in there.
jim
I have actually already
Posts: 13
I have actually already tried manually reserving irq #3 in the bios. Then, when I booted, it disabled irq #5, so then I reserved this irq, in which case it disabled irq #9. I then reserved all irq's in the list, even the ones that the serial and parallel ports use. For some reason this caused my dvd drive to stop working. After quite a bit of fiddling, I thought to interchange the ide and optical drive cables and then it worked. Now, since I can't get the optical and primary ide drive to show up simultaneously, the only space I have now is ramdisk, which is a meager 230mb.
There doesn't seem to be any irq autoconfigure mechanism. I don't think there's a way to disable PNP but I'll have to check.
Anyway, the point is that reserving various irq's in the bios didn't make any difference.
Thanks for the reply.
I may have made some
Posts: 13
I may have made some progress...
I disabled acpi, booted kernel 2.4 with minimum options (so I could see verbose output) and the messages regarding irq #15 (formerly irq #3) changed from assigned pci irq #15 and a weird acpi message to pci irq #15 and sharing the irq with another device, which is the same message I see when booting Debian. Therefore, disabling acpi may have helped my cause but I'm really not sure.
Also, I only get the 'disabling irq' message with kernel 2.6 while with kernel 2.4 I get ide: late registration of driver. I get this late registration driver message when booting Debian as well, but it just skips right over it without failure. I should note that with Debian I've never been able to get kernel 2.6 to work, so 2.4 is my best bet, it seems.
In addition, the kernel is trying to load a 3ware Storage Controller device driver. Directly after this, I get '3w-xxxx: no cards found'. I don't understand why it's trying to load this driver since my card is NOT 3ware, it is IOFLEX.
I also tried pnpbios=off with no success.
Thanks
I may have made some
Posts: 2280
Maybe more details about your motherboard and chipset & processor would get the grey matter working. Allso what do you have installed at this time in linux type. There are some things to do about installing the proper driver for your card but need to know what were dealing with. Since assigning irq dont work maybe setting them all to pci-auto might help and disabling pnplay too if possible, that will get the bios directly involved in assignment of irqs. Linux generally likes to work with the bios & is good at it.
jim
The motherboard is very
Posts: 13
The motherboard is very generic; Trigem Cognac.
Processor: Intel Celeron A (Coppermine)
Allso what do you have installed at this time in linux type.
My normal distro is Debian Sarge.
There are some things to do about installing the proper driver for your card but need to know what were dealing with.
How would I go about doing this? It seems like Mepis would be able to find the correct card manufacturer but I guess not. The driver is sata_sil (Silicon Image 3112).
I don't have pci-auto functionality? I can just set them all to available, which is what they're set to right now. My bios is extremely bare-bones.
My normal distro is Debian Sarge.
Posts: 2280
Ok is that what you have installed ?
Quote
How would I go about doing this? It seems like Mepis would be able to find the correct card manufacturer but I guess not. The driver is sata_sil (Silicon Image 3112).
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Not allways able to provide drivers for all implamentations of chipsets , venders roll their own variations on many even common chips. I for one havent heard of that board so it may a bit diffrent layout. Same for your net card especially if its not common in the US. So driver may be diffrent.
Dont know for sure it will work in Debian proper but you could try a modprobe sata_sil command in console as root & see if its available and install it . It does matter whats installed cause even in Debian all commands are not universal.
jim
fixed distro
Posts: 13
It turns out I fixed my distro. I to do it with Windoze (ltool and explore2fs).
It would still be nice to figure out what is plaguing Mepis in case there's another emergency in the future. I created three other live cd's while I was in Windows (Kanotix, Ubuntu and Gentoo) so I'll have to test those at some point.
Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it.
fixed distro
Posts: 2280
Now i need a little help to understand what you were trying to do exactly! Were you just trying to boot Debian or run Mepis from cdrom?
jim
Ah, I was trying to get
Posts: 13
Ah, I was trying to get Mepis to boot as a means to fix Debian.
disabling irq 3, halt
Posts: 2280
It would appear you have your finger on the problem . Have you googled your sata card to see if its supported in linux and what the driver or module is it uses?
jim