Arch Linux

tuta

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 4

Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

Hello!

My Arch Linux freezes when I increase or decrease the brightness.

To be honest, what I did in this video just "force" the freeze. The system also hangs up when I'm doing normal tasks (such as accessing internet, using libre office, etc).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpqqtx4rG88

The freeze happens on any desktop environment (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc.)...

Additional information

[root@myhost tuta]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 05)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05)
12:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
13:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet (rev c1)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)

tuta

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 4

Re: Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

Anyone can help me?

bernarcher

Forum Fellow

From: Germany

Registered: 2009-02-17

Posts: 2,281

Re: Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

tuta,
perhaps you should provide some more detail about your system, e.g. laptop brand and model, how the brightness adjust is supposed to work, e.g. keys, key bindings, or other related stuff.

Did you search the net for this? Probably there are others with such an issue.

---

To know or not to know ...
... the questions remain forever.

tuta

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 4

Re: Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

bernarcher,
More informations:
Brand: Dell
Model: N4030
Intel Core i3-370M
Chipset Mobile Intel® HM57 Express Chipset
Video Type: Intel HD Graphics

I set brightness using Fn+F4 or Fn+F5. As you can see on video (1st post), system freezes after some cycles of increase and decrease the brightness.
I search on web, but I didn't find a solution for my problema... I tried some solutions, but they didn't work.

I just did a clean installation.
Here the steps:
1) Install Arch using netinstall;
2) Install xorg-server;
3) Install xf86-video-intel;
4) Install GDM and modify the inittab;
5) Install Gnome.
And nothing more.

And the system keeps freezing...

Smod

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2011-09-25

Posts: 9

Re: Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

Hi there,

I have exactly the same problem on similar hardware (Dell laptop too), and it seems we're not alone :

http://www.mail-archive.com/acpi-bugzil … 34462.html

Quite frustating...

EDIT: blacklisting dell_laptop module unpopulates /sys/class/backlight/ and is a temporary workaround...

Last edited by Smod (2011-09-25 17:40:24)

tuta

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 4

Re: Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

Hi there,

I have exactly the same problem on similar hardware (Dell laptop too), and it seems we're not alone :

http://www.mail-archive.com/acpi-bugzil … 34462.html

Quite frustating...

EDIT: blacklisting dell_laptop module unpopulates /sys/class/backlight/ and is a temporary workaround...

Can you explain how can I dod that?

davidgurvich

Member

Registered: 2010-02-11

Posts: 118

Re: Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

Have you tried with only one stick of ram?  I hit an odd motherboard flaw with a Dell laptop where either stick by itself worked fine but together the system froze on (un)plugging the ac adapter.  Replacing one of the sticks fixed the issue. 

I'm sure that Dell has many more wonderfully buggy motherboards with unique features.

Smod

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2011-09-25

Posts: 9

Re: Arch Linux freezes on Dell N4030 (with video).

Can you explain how can I dod that?

Here's how to totally disable the backlight :

Boot the kernel with acpi_backlight set to vendor (default seems to be video, generic).

1a. If you use grub2, here's my /etc/default/grub :

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Arch Linux"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_backlight=vendor"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

Then generate your new grub.cfg

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

1b. If you use the old grub legacy, edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst :

kernel /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet acpi_backlight=vendor

Now, kernel is forced to use dell specific module, let's just blacklist it

2. Edit your /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf :

#
# /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf (for v2.6 kernels)
#

blacklist dell_laptop

Then reboot.

Of course, as I said, it's a temporary workaround. You are now unable to reduce the backlight, since /sys/class/backlight is unpopulated, but your system is stable.

Alternative

I prefer to use another alternative : I uninstalled my power manager (xfce4-power-manager), so that the backlight is no longer managed and no longer automatically grows dim when the laptop is left unused (that usually crashed the system).

To manually manage the brightness, you can do

echo n > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

where n is an integer between 1 and `cat max_brightness`.

However, this could still freeze the system.

That's clearly a kernel bug

Last edited by Smod (2011-10-11 18:12:39)