Request for explanation of error message

[Mike Marchywka]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 06:21:09AM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 30/07/2019, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > hi,
> > Am Montag, den 29.07.2019, 19:57 +0000 schrieb Mike Marchywka:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > >
> >> > > How often do you get the PCI errors? Do you check dmesg often?
> >> > >
> >> > The PCI errors appear to be ongoing and incessant.
> >> This may be relevant,
> >>
> >> https://askubuntu.com/questions/771899/pcie-bus-error-severity-
> >> corrected
> >
> > well, this points to:
> >
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1521173
> >
> > which has a lot of debug info and potential things to try ...
> >
> 
> I was previously referred to an "ask ubuntu" forum web page with a
> question and solutions relating to this, and, I changed the two lines
> in the grub file, to insert
> pci=nomsi
> then, whilst that stopped the growth of x-0.log , it did not stop the
> error repeating in dmesg output, so I replaced the nomsi with noaer,
> as was suggested, but, again, the same; the
> x-0.log file appears to have stopped growing, but, the error message
> is still incessantly repeating in dmesg.
> 
> > yet ... bret, did you consider that a pci card simply came loose during
> > the replacement of the ram ? i think it is really suspicious that the
> > log spam started when you had your memory replaced ... the same
> > hardware worked fine without that error before so i start to doubt it
> > is actually a software error (typically such things dont come out of
> > the blue)
> >

There are a lot of boot options related to PCI and interrupts,

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.14/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

but I'm not even sure of the architecture at this point. Hardware generates
interrupts for all kind of reasons and someone has to either respond to
it or mask it. Configuration would be a possible cause rather than
hardware problem. You could try a few others and see if anything helps
but maybe you could try turning things off,  

https://askubuntu.com/questions/4546/how-do-i-turn-off-pci-devices

there is also setpci and other tools but if you don't already know
what you are doing it may take some learning.


  

> 
> I think that this is wherer it would be really useful, if the error
> messages, or, some sort of diagnostic, or, otherwise, some system
> utility, identified what actual component is at the address, so,
> whatever the PCI device is, it could be easily identified, thence, for
> me to take the computer back to the shop, and say, "when the RAM was
> replaced, an error message has been occurring, showing that the blerg
> in the PCI slot, appears to have been dislodged - can you please fix
> it", but, without knowing what PCI device is affected, all I can say,
> is "something is wrong - please fix it", which is not helpful.
> 
> At the moment (and, for the last couple of months), my use of my right
> hand, is significantly restricted - it is only a little more useful,
> than if it would be tightly bandaged (which is about how it feels,
> most of the time), so, for me to try to do anything with the inside of
> the computer, would be more harmful than useful.
> 
> So, the problem of the incessantly growing log file, appears to be
> restrained by a bandaid fix - whatever was incessantly writing to it,
> appears to be broken,  shown by its hysterical panic, implemented by
> its incessant writing to the file. That problem is not solved - only,
> apparently, temporarily blocked, until it does it again.
> 
> > ciao
> > 	oli
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Bret Busby
> Armadale
> West Australia
> ..............
> 
> "So once you do know what the question actually is,
>  you'll know what the answer means."
> - Deep Thought,
>  Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
>  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
>  A Trilogy In Four Parts",
>  written by Douglas Adams,
>  published by Pan Books, 1992
> 
> ....................................................
> 
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-- 

mike marchywka
306 charles cox
canton GA 30115
USA, Earth 
marchywka at hotmail.com
404-788-1216
ORCID: 0000-0001-9237-455X