Bug 149588

Created attachment 67349 [details]
My hardware configuration

Reassigned to maintainer of hotplug.

I guess it loads a 'bad' driver.

Please boot without Coldplug. Then set /etc/udev/udev.conf:udev_log=info.
Insert a line
   sleep 2; sync; sleep 1
in /sbin/hwup, function modprobe_modalias, directly after line 
   info_mesg "executing modprobe $MODALIAS"
Then call coldplug start.

At the next boot you can look in /var/log/messages what happened right before the crash.

Created attachment 69201 [details]
Boot messages just before hang

Apologies for delay in responding but I have been very ill!

Attached is the section of /var/log/messages relating to the boot process just before the hang. This is following the changes to /etc/udev/udev.conf and /sbin/hwup as requested.
Regards, Steve

grep modprobe <your attachment> shows that modprobe is called for these modaliases:

pci:v000010B9d00005237sv000010B9sd00005237bc0Csc03i10
pci:v000010B9d00005237sv000010B9sd00005237bc0Csc03i10
pci:v000010B9d00005239sv000010B9sd00005272bc0Csc03i20
pci:v00001102d00000002sv00001102sd00008061bc04sc01i00
pci:v00001102d00007002sv00001102sd00000020bc09sc80i00
pci:v0000109Ed0000036Esv00000000sd00000000bc04sc00i00
pci:v0000109Ed00000878sv00000000sd00000000bc04sc80i00
pci:v000010DEd00000171sv00000000sd00000000bc03sc00i00

Again start without coldplug and then call modprobe for each of these modaliases. Which is the evil?

Created attachment 69597 [details]
modules list

This are the modules which will be loaded for the mentioned modaliases.

Christian,

Either of the two following modaliases will cause my system to hang:

pci:v0000109Ed0000036Esv00000000sd00000000bc04sc00i00
pci:v0000109Ed00000878sv00000000sd00000000bc04sc80i00

From the attachment of the modules that load for the modaliases, I note that these modaliases appear to be for a TV card (chipset BT878)?

I do have installed a satellite TV card (Twinhan/Vision Plus VP1020 Free-To-Air card). However, on previous releases of SuSE Linux I have not been able to use the supplied drivers to get the card to work, indeed I do recall configuring the card caused the system to hang! So, on subsequent upgrades I've never bothered to config the card and SuSE has installed and ran fine. I have also not configured the card under SuSE 10.0, but this is obviously not a solution that works for SuSE 10.0. 

Whereas, it would be nice to be able to use the card with SuSE Linux, I'd be quite happy if I could get the rest of the system to behave normally. Is there some way to stop coldplug from issuing modprobe for the two modaliases which are causing the system to hang? It's as if SuSE Linux is attempting to load the drivers for the satellite card even though the card has not been configured in Yast. 

By the way, the satellite card works fine with Windows and the supplied Windows drivers, so I can actually use the satellite card OK.

Best Regards,
Steve  

Christian,

Either of the two following modaliases will cause my system to hang:

pci:v0000109Ed0000036Esv00000000sd00000000bc04sc00i00
pci:v0000109Ed00000878sv00000000sd00000000bc04sc80i00

From the attachment of the modules that load for the modaliases, I note that
these modaliases appear to be for a TV card (chipset BT878)?

I do have installed a satellite TV card (Twinhan/Vision Plus VP1020 Free-To-Air
card). However, on previous releases of SuSE Linux I have not been able to use
the supplied drivers to get the card to work, indeed I do recall configuring
the card caused the system to hang! So, on subsequent upgrades I've never
bothered to config the card and SuSE has installed and ran fine. I have also
not configured the card under SuSE 10.0, but this is obviously not a solution
that works for SuSE 10.0. 

Whereas, it would be nice to be able to use the card with SuSE Linux, I'd be
quite happy if I could get the rest of the system to behave normally. Is there
some way to stop coldplug from issuing modprobe for the two modaliases which
are causing the system to hang? It's as if SuSE Linux is attempting to load the
drivers for the satellite card even though the card has not been configured in
Yast. 

By the way, the satellite card works fine with Windows and the supplied Windows
drivers, so I can actually use the satellite card OK.

Best Regards,
Steve  

Gerd, if there must something be added to the blacklist, reassign to me.

Oh well, that's a very special piece of hardware.
Problem is that
  (a) touching the (unused) video function of the bt878 will freeze the machine
and
  (b) the card lacks a PCI subsystem ID and thus can't be identified automatically.

Steve:  If you load the driver using "modprobe bttv card=113" the freezes should go away.  If you load the dvb driver (bt878) afterwards chances are good that the card even works ok with linux.

Christian:  Simply blacklisting the whole bttv module due to that isn't an option IMHO.  Is it possible to blacklist specific PCI ID's only?  Especially: is it possible to blacklist bt878 cards which don't have a PCI Subsystem ID, but without blocking all bt878 cards while doing so?

Blacklisting via modprobes blacklist command does afaik not work (Marian, you might know better). But we can add special alias lines for these and redirect them to bin/true (or better echo info).

alias pci:v0000109Ed0000036Esv00000000sd00000000bc04sc00i00 skip_it
install skip_it /bin/echo "This module alias is blacklisted"

Tell me which pci ID's you want to treat this way.

The line you've picked in comment #12 is the correct one ;)

Ah and I think "pci:v0000109Ed00000878sv00000000sd00000000bc04sc80i00" must be handled that way too otherwise we'll get bttv.ko loaded again via bt878.ko symbol dependencies.

I'd suggest to make the echo a bit more descriptive (bt878 chip without PCI Subsystem ID) so we remember the reason it was blacklisted.

Taking yast2-tv maintainer into Cc:, he might want to know what we are doing ;)

Added this to blacklist:

# These devices have bt878 chip without PCI Subsystem ID. Without that info bttv
# does not know how to treat them properly. Therefore we disable autoloading of
# modules for these devices.
# See https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=149588
# To enable your device craete a hardware configuration file for your device.
# See man hwup for details. Try option 'card=113' with module 'bttv'.
alias pci:v0000109Ed0000036Esv00000000sd00000000bc04sc00i00 bttv_skip_it
alias pci:v0000109Ed00000878sv00000000sd00000000bc04sc80i00 bttv_skip_it
install bttv_skip_it /bin/echo "module alias skipped (bt878 chip without PCI Subsystem ID)"

Fixed in svn, Try oran-zoz-23.

Almost perfect ;)  card=113 is only fine for the card in this bug (i.e. twinhan dvb cards), for other cards other values are needed to get them work correctly. (Documentation/video4linux/CARDLIST.bttv in the linux kernel source tree has a list ...).

# To enable your device create a hardware configuration file for your device.
# See man hwup for details.
# You will probably have to specify an option to identify your card. Have a look
# in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/CARDLIST.bttv.

Gerd: Thanks for the info, issuing "modprobe bttv card=113" works okay.

Christian: Many thanks, I'll take a look at the documentation you recommended, in the meantime  I've the alias entries you recommended to /etc/modprobe.conf.local and reenabled coldplug successfully.

alias pci:v0000109Ed0000036Esv00000000sd00000000bc04sc00i00 bttv_skip_it
alias pci:v0000109Ed00000878sv00000000sd00000000bc04sc80i00 bttv_skip_it
install bttv_skip_it /bin/echo "module alias skipped (bt878 chip without PCI Subsystem ID)" 
Best Regards, Steve