10.04 problems on Dell GX 610 and D600 and HP 140

Hi All
Tried fresh installs using both default ubuntu and EMC install files plus the latest EMC release, but just can not seem to get things working smooth at all. All machines are running with Latency and RTAI problems and my server will not enable my PCI parallel port card (single port moschip)? I have another bitsa box with the same issues. Spoke with a friend running an old advent laptop suffering the same problems. Can i ask are we just that unlucky or is this a wider issue? There do not seem to be many people talking about their install issues at the moment. These machines all worked fine fist time on 8.04 please any feedback on others suffering the same thing would be appreciated.

first you should seperate and describe more precisely your problems.
"Latency and RTAI" are quite different from PCI parallel port.

What do you mean by "Latency and RTAI" ?
There is a well known problem with apic/lapic, which prevents RTAI from running.
There are already threads also in this forum about it, with a solution.

Gerd

Hi Gerd

Don't worry about the delivery of my first post as i was just letting off steam. I realise there are a few different problems in there. The main issue i had was with all the machines i have they installed almost without a hitch on 8.04 and now i can not get a single machine to run out the box. I've just finished a new build and been desperate to get it up and cutting. After spending all day at work dealing with computers (poke in the eye windoze) i did not want to come home to a fight here too. the closest two machines i have working are suffering with latency issues being too high. lookiing around i could not see the obvious answer straight away and there seems to be less people actually reporting issues. I don't mind really working at issues i just wanted to play with my new toy Anyway i shall pic on one machine at a time and work through the problems and hopefully give something back in the way of letting others know my problems and fixes.
Thanks

Paul

hi Paul,

only one question about your latency issue:
are you saying, your machines had a better latency with 8.04 ? Or are that different machines ?
Generally latency problems are not that rarely, and I guess usual causes are graphics card/driver and SMI Interrupt.
You will have a lot of hits when you search these pages here.

Gerd

Ok i picked on one of the machines and yes the latency is more on 10.04 than 8.04. As i do not have the old build to reference too being exact about the issue i can not be sure? it looks like the new version has enabled features that were not previously running. This could account for the raise? the first step will be to bung in a graphics card to eliminate the on board one which shares memory. The server which would be my preference of box just needs me to play with the driver for the Parallel port card, it is installed but showing disabled. I'm going to forget trying use the Dells as the bios's are not friendly enough to play with the LAPIC settings (none).

I had also problems with an old Dell with lapic, but there is no need playing with BIOS. Just add "lapic" to the boot entry of grub.

Gerd

Just want to make sure people understand that "lapic" may not work on some PCs and based on reply in the mailing list there is no way around.
I went back to 8.04 just because ot this

My understanding of this is pretty fuzzy but I think its possible make a non-smp kernel for older systems without a lapic or with a broken one...

Yes it is possible, I did it before when I needed SMP kernel on a different newer PC in 8.04, but you need more than basic Linux skills here.
Most of EMC2 users have very little Linux knowledge and it should be done with Live CD

Also any automatic upgrade of a "special" version will kill it, so we will be forced to rebuild it every time new version comes out.

This is very unfortunate turn of events here since most of us will try to keep old PCs with EMC2

Andy123 wrote:

Just want to make sure people understand that "lapic" may not work on some PCs and based on reply in the mailing list there is no way around.
I went back to 8.04 just because ot this

I agree, this is simply the frustrating truth in some cases, at least as far as a standard EMC is concerned.
But in some cases the grub lapic solution works and is very simple to implement also for Linux non-experts.
So give it a try and good luck ...

Gerd