This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 03:26:04 -0800 From: Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com> To: SVLUG <svlug@svlug.org> Subject: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? I have internal modem (real one, it works, the question is not about it and I know I should get external one:-) which acts as a serial port. It is ISA PnP card, can use different IRQs. My main question is: how do I find out which IRQ it uses using linux tools? the only way I can do it now is boot windows and peek into control panel|system (btw it uses either 9 or 11) I have also a strange related story to contribute: I have this modem along with other cards (ISA: sb awe 64, PCI: voodoo 3, network card lne100tx) and it has been using IRQ 11 for ages. Since the network card does not work properly, I taken all the cards out (except of video&network) and tested the network card (just to see if there are any strange confilcts, becuase previously I noticed that network card conflicted with soundcard when inserted in particular PCI slot (even though soundcardis ISA card)). No config files were changed, AFAIK. Later on I put all the cards back into computer (exactly the same slots) and suddenly I noticed that modem works incredibly slow, it couldn't connect (timeouts). I suspected IRQ so I rebooted win95 and sure enough, IRQ for the modem was now 9 (it was 11 before). I rebooted back to linux, changed IRQ to 9 and now the modem works. neither 9 nor 11 is used by anything else. however, network card used to be 9 and now is 10. any ideas why was the irq changed? thanks in advance erik === Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 11:45:25 -0500 From: Brian Coyle <brianc@magicnet.net> To: SVLUG <svlug@svlug.org> Subject: Re: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? Erik Steffl wrote: > > It is ISA PnP card, can use different IRQs. > > My main question is: how do I find out which IRQ it uses > using linux tools? $ man 8 pnpdump $ man 5 isapnp.conf $ man 8 isapnp === Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 11:00:41 -0800 From: Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com> To: SVLUG <svlug@svlug.org> Subject: Re: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? Brian Coyle wrote: > > Erik Steffl wrote: > > > > It is ISA PnP card, can use different IRQs. > > > > My main question is: how do I find out which IRQ it uses > > using linux tools? > > $ man 8 pnpdump > $ man 5 isapnp.conf > $ man 8 isapnp pnpdump gives the possible configurations, not the one to use. it has the -c switch that attempts to find safe config but it uses info about what is already used (/etc/interrupts and /etc/isapnp.gone), which is not what I am asking about. In my case both irq 9 and irq 11 are free (not used) but only setserial /dev/ttyS2 irq 9 works. how do I find that out? (without using win or trying all unused IRQs) erik === Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 11:47:57 -0800 (PST) From: Rafael <raffi@linwin.com> To: Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com> Subject: Re: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Erik Steffl wrote: > I have internal modem (real one, it works, the question is not about > it and I know I should get external one:-) which acts as a serial port. > It is ISA PnP card, can use different IRQs. > > My main question is: how do I find out which IRQ it uses using linux > tools? There are GUI tools in most decent distributions that can tell you about hardware parameters just like the lame OS you mentioned elsewhere. Poke around pulldown menus. However, we have access to the kernel file system, assuming it's compiled to do so, which is a huge advantage for troubleshooting, stats, and monitoring. cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 0: 271695712 XT-PIC timer 1: 629370 XT-PIC keyboard 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 8: 6 XT-PIC rtc 10: 2542314 XT-PIC eth0 11: 54425 XT-PIC 53c7,8xx 12: 6210633 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse 13: 1 XT-PIC fpu 14: 6221167 XT-PIC ide0 NMI: 0 As you can tell my PC doesn't show the sound card. But I do have one. I can see it when playing 'saytime' for example. Why the difference? Loadable modules. cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 0: 271751152 XT-PIC timer 1: 631862 XT-PIC keyboard 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 5: 440957 XT-PIC soundblaster 8: 6 XT-PIC rtc 10: 2545965 XT-PIC eth0 11: 54425 XT-PIC 53c7,8xx 12: 6212958 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse 13: 1 XT-PIC fpu 14: 6221390 XT-PIC ide0 So when you use /proc/interrupts you need to pay attention to how the kernel works. My /etc/modules.conf alias scsi_hostadapter ncr53c8xx alias eth0 tulip alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc alias sound-slot-0 sb options sound dmabuf=1 options opl3 io=0x388 #alias midi awe_wave #post-install awe_wave /bin/sfxload /etc/midi/GU11-ROM.SF2 options sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=0 dma16=0 mpu_io=0x330 alias char-major-81 videodev alias char-major-81-0 bttv pre-install bttv modprobe -k msp3400; modprobe -k tuner options bttv radio=1 options tuner type=5 > the only way I can do it now is boot windows and peek into control > panel|system (btw it uses either 9 or 11) Whatz that? It's a good idea to 'ls /usr/(s)bin' sometimes and then 'man whatever' appears to be interesting. You "discover" all kinds of tools you never imagined exist on your system. For the brave souls, execute any of those programs as a regular user and see what happens. Sometimes it tells you have to be root to run it and if you read it's man pages you learn new command. Worth writing down the important ones and keep them in private quick admin guide. > I have also a strange related story to contribute: I have this modem > along with other cards (ISA: sb awe 64, PCI: voodoo 3, network card > lne100tx) and it has been using IRQ 11 for ages. Since the network card > does not work properly, I taken all the cards out (except of > video&network) and tested the network card (just to see if there are any > strange confilcts, becuase previously I noticed that network card > conflicted with soundcard when inserted in particular PCI slot (even > though soundcardis ISA card)). No config files were changed, AFAIK. > > Later on I put all the cards back into computer (exactly the same > slots) and suddenly I noticed that modem works incredibly slow, it > couldn't connect (timeouts). I suspected IRQ so I rebooted win95 and > sure enough, IRQ for the modem was now 9 (it was 11 before). I rebooted > back to linux, changed IRQ to 9 and now the modem works. Plug&play changes IRQ and DMA stuff on some cooperating (?) interfaces during PeeCee selftest. Get a real computer based on Alpha, Sparc or such CPU and you won't have this problems :-) > > neither 9 nor 11 is used by anything else. however, network card used > to be 9 and now is 10. /usr/sbin/sndconfig (RH) is a tool you can use to modify the parameters on sound card. I usualy use IRQ5 for sound card since IRQ5 is by the definition designated to the second parallel port (how good idea that was?) which most computers don't use. Some older ethernet cards can only use IRQ 5,7,9. As we all know, PeeCee hardware (architecture sucks) so it's better to have fixed IRQ and DMA parameters for bus handshaking than plug and play with older cards. === From: Jean-Philippe.Laroche@cel.com To: steffl@bigfoot.com, svlug@svlug.org Subject: RE: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 14:40:18 -0800 This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. ------_=_NextPart_001_01C06944.1B499BA0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Often the best way is to turn off th eplug and play capability of the card, and configure the IRQ the old way, by asking for detection or assigning an IRQ. I had no success with isapnp tools, so I used a dos program (from a floppy) to disable the PNP feature of the card. === From: dfox@belvedere.sbay.org Subject: Re: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? To: raffi@linwin.com (Rafael) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 18:39:38 -0800 (PST) Cc: svlug@svlug.org > As you can tell my PC doesn't show the sound card. But I do have one. I > can see it when playing 'saytime' for example. Why the difference? > Loadable modules. Interesting. OTOH, my PCI netcard (no modules) doesn't show up in /proc/interrupts unless it's activated via ifconfig eth0. I thought that was kind of strange. === Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 19:35:24 -0800 To: dfox@belvedere.sbay.org,raffi@linwin.com (Rafael) From: Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com> Subject: Re: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? Cc: svlug@svlug.org At 06:39 PM 12/19/00 -0800, dfox@belvedere.sbay.org wrote: >> As you can tell my PC doesn't show the sound card. But I do have one. I >> can see it when playing 'saytime' for example. Why the difference? >> Loadable modules. > >Interesting. OTOH, my PCI netcard (no modules) doesn't show up in >/proc/interrupts unless it's activated via ifconfig eth0. I thought that >was kind of strange. In my experience (most of the relevant experience being with serial ports), /proc/interrupts lists only the IRQs of devices that have been used. That's why it's hard to spot the IRQ conflict caused by a NIC trying to use IRQ3 when an unused serial port (or modem) is also on that IRQ. Rafael, you might check if the sound card's IRQs show up *after* you play something through it. David, I'd expect your NIC exierience to be the standard way NICs get reported. === Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 22:29:40 -0800 (PST) From: Rafael <raffi@linwin.com> To: Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com> Subject: Re: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? On Tue, 19 Dec 2000, Ray Olszewski wrote: > At 06:39 PM 12/19/00 -0800, dfox@belvedere.sbay.org wrote: > >> As you can tell my PC doesn't show the sound card. But I do have one. I > >> can see it when playing 'saytime' for example. Why the difference? > >> Loadable modules. [*] That's what I pointed out here. IRQ becomes "visible" when I run 'saytime' for example. Realaudio etc would do the same. I thought I explained what's the difference in the above statement. > >Interesting. OTOH, my PCI netcard (no modules) doesn't show up in > >/proc/interrupts unless it's activated via ifconfig eth0. I thought that > >was kind of strange. > > In my experience (most of the relevant experience being with serial ports), > /proc/interrupts lists only the IRQs of devices that have been used. That's > why it's hard to spot the IRQ conflict caused by a NIC trying to use IRQ3 > when an unused serial port (or modem) is also on that IRQ. > > Rafael, you might check if the sound card's IRQs show up *after* you play > something through it. David, I'd expect your NIC exierience to be the > standard way NICs get reported. [*] === Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 08:28:06 -0800 From: Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com> To: svlug@svlug.org Subject: Re: [svlug] IRQ: how to find out which is to be used? dfox@belvedere.sbay.org wrote: > > > As you can tell my PC doesn't show the sound card. But I do have one. I > > can see it when playing 'saytime' for example. Why the difference? > > Loadable modules. > > Interesting. OTOH, my PCI netcard (no modules) doesn't show up in > /proc/interrupts unless it's activated via ifconfig eth0. I thought that > was kind of strange. that's what it says it docs, only 'occured' interrupts are shown in /proc/interrupts, it does not report what you've set but what actually happened. === Subject: Re: Installing Samba From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 18:53:01 -0800 begin Todd Cary quotation: > As many of you know, I have installed Red Hat Linux 6.1 on a computer > that is on a NT network. During the installation I was not asked about > being on a network or about a NIC. Are you the guy with the 3Com 3C509B ethernet card? If so, did you remember to use the Etherdisk utilities to disable ISA Plug and Play, as I mentioned? If the installer didn't prompt you for network details, then it sounds as if it didn't see your NIC. It probably didn't see your NIC because of the the &$%T#$+D#$# ISA PNP crud. Ergo.... > What is my next step? Disable the 3Com's PnP design-error. Then start over. (Yes, there are certainly ways to retroactively tell a distribution about a NIC that it didn't find during installation. I'm just not going to get into those.) If you'd rather not disable Plug'n'Pray, good luck to you. The advantage of my way is that it works. ===