Arch Linux

davy_crockett

Member

Registered: 2015-10-21

Posts: 75

[SOLVED] Dell docking station causes graphics drivers to crash

Hi there,

My hardware is a Dell Precision M6700 laptop with an AMD FirePro M6000 graphics card. I was experiencing problems with both the proprietary catalyst and open-source graphics drivers, resulting in the system crashing or freezing after a length of time (from 30 minutes to several hours); requiring a reboot. See this thread for details: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=208568. When it crashes with the open-source drivers, the console will display a repeating error message, such as:

radeon 0000:01:00.0: ring 5 stalled for more than 1000 msec

When it crashed with the proprietary drivers, the keyboard and mouse became totally unresponsive, forcing me to reboot the system.

I've isolated this problem to the Dell E-Port Plus II Port Replicator / docking station I was using; when the laptop was on the docking station I was experiencing these issues; when I'm not using the docking station I no longer experience the crashes or freezes. However, I would really like to be able to use my docking station with linux, as it gives me more USB ports and the ability to connect additional monitors and it saves having to manually connect my power, USB devices, monitor, audio out etc. each time I move my laptop.

I tried a complete reinstall of Arch when it was on the docking station with no success; I still experienced the same issues. I also briefly tried Gentoo linux; although I much prefer Arch - one thing I found was in Gentoo the installation instructions cover manually compiling your own kernel. When I was compiling my kernel I found a Dell Laptop kernel module that wasn't enabled by default. Is this enabled in Arch, and if not, would it help? (I didn't go all the way installing Gentoo, I found that Arch is much simpler and more to my style)

Is there anything I can do to get my docking station to work without the graphics card/drivers locking up after a while? Would enabling any certain kernel modules or compiling my own kernel with these help?

Last edited by davy_crockett (2017-02-10 04:10:12)

marcvangend

Member

Registered: 2013-04-22

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Dell docking station causes graphics drivers to crash

Davy, did you ever solve this issue, or find more info? I'm seeing similar issues with a Dell Latitude, which hangs during shutdown/reboot when docked.

davy_crockett

Member

Registered: 2015-10-21

Posts: 75

Re: [SOLVED] Dell docking station causes graphics drivers to crash

Yes I figured out the cause of this; it was a hardware issue with the motherboard. I had the motherboard on my laptop replaced and the issue is now resolved.