Bug#404504: GRUB menu freeze with USB mouse inserted

Tue Oct 23 15:26:06 UTC 2007

                             Robert Pogson

                        robert.pogson at gmail.com

                               2007-10-23

I was shocked that my system that has been reliable for years did not
boot yesterday. It froze while displaying the grub menu. Several other
symptoms:

      * SystemRescueCD was very jerky while booting. Long pauses at
        several points.

      * software RAID arrays were not starting properly and I had to
        chroot to get into my system from SystemRescueCD. The /dev/mdx x
        values seemed random.

      * removing the USB mouse before or during boot made things work.
        Pulling the mouse out unfreezes the GRUB menu.

By using the SystemRescueCD, I can see the software RAID /dev/mdx are
confused when the USB mouse is in place during boot. I moved boot to an
ext3 partition and this had no effect on the freezing but it did allow
me to boot using the RescueCD after resyncing the RAID arrays. Using the
RescueCD, I can boot disk1 or disk2 and see an error 17 with the mouse
in place and normal booting with the mouse unplugged. I tried USB legacy
support on and off in the BIOS setup. That made no difference.

I have always used a PS/2 mouse with this system but a mouse failure
caused me to use the USB mouse a couple of months back. This is the
first shutdown period of the system since August. It serves as a
GNU/Linux terminal server and is always heavily loaded with hundreds of
processes. Memtest also is clean.

Beast:/home/pogson# uname -a

Linux Beast 2.6.18-5-amd64 #1 SMP Sun Aug 12 20:31:42 UTC 2007 x86_64
GNU/Linux

Beast:/home/pogson#

Beast:/home/pogson# lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge

00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge

00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge

00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge

00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge

00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge

00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge
[K8T800/K8T890 South]

00:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169
Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)

00:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169
Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)

00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID
Controller (rev 80)

00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)

00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 81)

00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 81)

00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 81)

00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 81)

00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)

00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge
[KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]

00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
HyperTransport Technology Configuration

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
Address Map

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
DRAM Controller

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
Miscellaneous Control

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2
Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15)

Beast:/home/pogson# apt-cache policy

Package files:

100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

release a=now

500 http://localhost etch/contrib Packages

release v=4.0r1,o=Debian,a=stable,l=Debian,c=contrib

origin localhost

500 http://localhost etch/main Packages

release v=4.0r1,o=Debian,a=stable,l=Debian,c=main

origin localhost

Pinned packages:

The mouse that triggered the problem is

Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1241:1177 Belkin F8E842-DL Mouse

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

usbview shows:

usbhid

Speed: 1.5Mb/s (low)

USB Version: 1.10

Device Class: 00(>ifc )

Device Subclass: 00

Device Protocol: 00

Maximum Default Endpoint Size: 8

Number of Configurations: 1

Vendor Id: 1241

Product Id: 1177

Revision Number: 2.70

Config Number: 1

Number of Interfaces: 1

Attributes: a0

MaxPower Needed: 100mA

Interface Number: 0

Name: usbhid

Alternate Number: 0

Class: 03(HID ) 

Sub Class: 1

Protocol: 2

Number of Endpoints: 1

Endpoint Address: 81

Direction: in

Attribute: 3

Type: Int.

Max Packet Size: 8

Interval: 10ms

pogson at Beast:~$ cat /etc/fstab;cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

/dev/md0 / jfs defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

/dev/md1 /home jfs defaults,noatime 0 2

/dev/md2 /var jfs defaults,noatime 0 2

/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2

/dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0

/dev/hdc2 none swap sw 0 0

/dev/hdd /media/cdrom0 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

#//c-machine/camerapics /home/pix smbfs ro,username=dene,password=""

/var/run /var/chroot32/var/run none bind 0 0

proc /var/chroot32/proc proc defaults 0 0

/dev/sda2 /var/www/html/library/stacks squashfs ro,auto 0 0

/dev/sda3 /var/www/html/ubuntu jfs ro,noauto,owner,quota 0 0

/dev/sda4 /home/pogson/u jfs ro,auto,user 0 0

/dev/sdb1 /media/usbdrive vfat rw,noauto,user 0 0

DEVICE /dev/hda* /dev/hdc* /dev/.static/sda1 /dev/hda6 /dev/hdc6 /dev/.static/dev/sda1

ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2
UUID=2cc1f6ef:e83d6335:497bbf84:2cce1ce1

devices=/dev/hda5,/dev/hdc5

ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2
UUID=c8f363ef:190e66a2:522ceb30:f9a9329f

devices=/dev/hda3,/dev/hdc3

ARRAY /dev/md2 level=raid1 num-devices=3
UUID=1cda7a7f:4037bf00:1e33a4b1:d17cb6d4

devices=/dev/.static/dev/sda1,/dev/hdc6,/dev/hda6

pogson at Beast:~$

-- 
A problem is an opportunity.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grub-devel/attachments/20071023/a763012f/attachment.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grub-devel/attachments/20071023/a763012f/attachment.pgp 