Intel Atom/NVidia bug

1st Official Post

    Hi,

    I have a Zotac ID41 with Intel Atom quad CPU 1.8GHz
    Via USB there are connected two hard drive bays Mediasonic holding 4 hard drives each with media (8 drives total).
    On an internal SSD I have installed Ubuntu 14 with Kodi and OpenElec and in both everything works fine, except Ubuntu is slower, heavier system and OpenElec has it own problems with some freezes and sometimes with sound and that is the main reason to switch to LibreELEC.

    Initially I have wipped OpenElec from SSD (after backup) and replaced LibreELEC target files in boot partition so I started with a fresh installation of LibreELEC.
    I have noticed the bug described lower and to repeat the problem I have reinstalled Libre on a USB drive from the image.

    Problem description:
    1. At boot all drives connects with no problem and all seems to work fine. I initiate suspend, after few minutes wake, it shows "successfully disconnected drives" but does NOT connect them back, after about 20 seconds it shows again "successfully disconnected drives". Confirmed in video/files no drives are connected. I repeat, the curent drives setup was made few years back and it works fine in Ubuntu/Kodi and Openelec.

    2. At the stage described above, I initiate suspend again, LibreELEC freezes for about 10 seconds and it returns back to the screen, without suspend. Probably the problem 2 is related to problem 1.

    This is the LibreELEC log file during the process described in problem 1 and 2:
    e4Ty0MZb

    This is the result of dmesg command after boot when all drives are connected:
    LDCd

    This is the result of dmesg command after suspend/wake command when all drives failed to connected:
    dibM

    For comparisson, these are the dmesg commands in Openelec after boot and after suspend/wake:
    EiTS
    EdQC

    I hope we will find a solution.

    Edited once, last by DigitALL (June 9, 2016 at 7:52 PM).

    Looks more like filesystem or bad blocks issue. The dmesg from OpenELEC indicates this as well. The biggest difference from OE6 to LE7 is kernel 4.1 vs 4.4, perhaps the older kernel somehow handles it better, I don't know.

    Did you try doing a full fsck and bad blocks check?

    Quote from escalade


    Looks more like filesystem or bad blocks issue. The dmesg from OpenELEC indicates this as well. The biggest difference from OE6 to LE7 is kernel 4.1 vs 4.4, perhaps the older kernel somehow handles it better, I don't know.

    Did you try doing a full fsck and bad blocks check?

    I will do a full drives check in Ubuntu, thanks for suggestion. I will report back.

    Most forums that I am aware require to place any links in code tag but I will remove them.

    I have tested the drives with GParted using fsck comand (fsck -f -y -v -C 0/dev/sdxy) and found two drives with some "inode" issues (whatever that is). But no bad blocks and no major problems.
    I cannot attach (forum does not allow it) the two htm files with the repair report but unfortunately the drives test did NOT solved the wake and reboot problems.

    I hope this report will be looked into by coders. Until then I am forced to use Openelec.
    I have attached one file as a txt, if interested rename to htm to view it.

    I have checked the drives again and there is no issue reported with fsck command.
    I would say the problem must be evident if someone familiar with the coding would look into it. It may be from the kernel or not, the problem is still unsolved and unfortunately I cannot switch back and forth so easily from OpenElec to LibreElec. I am using this HTPC daily and I will swtich back to Libre if I would have to perform some meaningful tests with the hope that someone will really look into in order to fix this issue.

    The question is: Will anyone look serioulsy into to fix it or everyone here is focused on releasing next version and beyond?

    Edited once, last by DigitALL (June 12, 2016 at 1:21 PM).

    It has passed more than 10 days since I opened this bug and it seems that there is no solution or people who would may find a solution simply did not have time or interest in looking into it.
    The release of LibreELEC v.7 is listed as a stable release but in fact with a very common system using Atom CPU does not work using USB attached drives.
    Is it possible to get any meaningful suggestion on a possible fix?

    Drivers are in the kernel, LibreELEC have no kernel developers. They use the upstream Linux kernel with a minimal set of patches, so that's where you should report any bugs.

    I recommend trying out the latest alpha which uses the 4.6 kernel and thus have the most up to date driver.

    It is too early for me to try alpha, when it will be in the beta stage most definetly will test it.

    But since this bug appears to be a kernel issue, why the stable generic LibreELEC release doesn't have have some notes about its limitations?
    Even if I will somehow find the proper way to report issues about the kernel that most likely will not be corrected, will the LiberELEC developers include a new release with the updated kernel for the "stable" version?

    In most areas of free s/w it seems that once that a version is released nobody has the will to go back to fix the eventual bugs, instead all are focused on the new/alpha/beta releases and so every piece of software will never be complete or as stable as advertised. This is the case with Openelec too.

    Edited once, last by DigitALL (June 20, 2016 at 1:01 PM).

    Basically, you are complaining about an unconfirmed bug in the Linux kernel not getting fixed in the wrong forum. Suspend/resume works perfect for me on two different platforms. The 4.4 kernel included in LE7 is the latest LTS (long term support) stable version. LE is a pretty vanilla Linux distribution, 99% of the software included is developed elsewhere.

    As for my suggestion to try the alpha, it's simply an easy way for you to confirm if there's a difference between 4.4 and 4.6. Even if it's an alpha, I think you'll find it's perfectly stable. The core OS is not much different from LE7, it's just the Kodi version that's bleeding edge. I've been using Krypton for the last month and it's 100% stable for me. Of course if you'd rather use Kodi 16 simply downgrade after you've tested.