Problem with SMI fix

Hi
First let me say that I am very much a newbie at Linux.

Now for the real issue. I have installed from the latest Live CD 2.5.1. Everything seems to go as advertised. When I run the Latency test with an otherwise idle system the Jitter is under 10,000 for about 5-10 minutes and suddenly jumps to 300,000. After I read some of the documentationI assume that I am running into the SMI problem.
After banging my head on the desk for awhile I figured that I needed to use "gksudo gedit" to edit the two lines in "rtapi.conf". Have more than double checked to make sure that this is exactly as per the Wiki FixingSMIIssues.
Now the Latency test does not run. No visible indications of any kind.
I have checked with "$ lsmod | grep rtai" and I can see that the rtai_smi module is NOT loaded....
When I remove the two modifications the Latency test runs and will again climb to 300K+ after a few minutes.

Any help/suggestions will be appreciated

Tony

Hi

When I run the Latency test with an otherwise idle system the Jitter is under 10,000 for about 5-10 minutes and suddenly jumps to 300,000.

It is unlikely that your problem is SMI, these interrupts occur regularly, normally every 32 or 64 seconds, you would not run unaffected for 10 minutes.

The smi module is probably shown as not loaded, because it checked your chipset, found it was not one that it was built to address and aborted .

Now the Latency test does not run. No visible indications of any kind.

Always run latency-test from a terminal and you will get error messages which will tell you what the problem is, if you have one.
Your loading of rt probably aborted because the smi module did

Basically you need to look at other factors, what happens to cause the jump in jitter.

Have a read of my FAQs on latency at the head of the computer section?

The main question for you is what is your computer, is it a known bad one that will never improve (link in the FAQ)

Also what Ubuntu version did you install, 10.04 runs like s**t on a lot of older computers, try installing 8.04 Live CD, newest is not best.

Use the latency test shown in the FAQ in a terminal, do stuff and see what causes the spike.
The GUI latency test just shows the jitter at the highest it gets to, the other test shows the exact point it spiked and what it went down to afterwards.

regards

Thanks for the quick reply.
When I run Latency-test without the fix from the terminal I don't see anything reported when the jitter spikes.
With the SMIfix in place I get '/usr/realtime-2.6.32-122-rtai/modules/rtai-smi.ko':-1
No such device. This sounds a lot like what you said:
"The smi module is probably shown as not loaded, because it checked your chipset, found it was not one that it was built to address and aborted". The mother board that I am using is rather obscure as it came out of a "appliance designed to be used as sort of media receiver/player. It is enterely possible that has a custom bios for that application.
The smi module is probably shown as not loaded, because it checked your chipset, found it was not one that it was built to address and aborted .

The smi module is probably shown as not loaded, because it checked your chipset, found it was not one that it was built to address and aborted .

System Specification
M/B
- MS-6760 (Proprietary F/F), 185 x 290 mm (4 layer)
CPU:
- Support Socket 478 for Pentium® 4, 2.8 GHz
Chipset:
- SiS 651 + SiS 962
Memory:
- DDR 333 x 2, support memory up to 2.0GB
On-Board Audio:
- AC’97 Codec integrated in ALC 650, support 5.1 channel , SPDIF In/Out.
On-Board VGA:
- Integrated (AGP 4X)
** On-Board VGA memory: None
On-Board Communication
- LAN: integrated in Realtek (10/100Mb)
- Modem: 56K MDC module
On-Board USB
- Front x 2; Rear x 2; On-Board x 2 for Card Reader & RF K/B, M/S (MFG Option)
On-Board IEEE 1394:
- RTL8801B PHY (2 ports), Front x 2 (4 pin, 6 pin)
Expansion Slots:
- PCI 2.2 x 1, AGP (4X) x1
Power Off Function:
- Playback Audio CD, MP3, AM/FM Radio Tuner (with Remote Controller)
TV Tuner Function
- MS-8606 (Option PCI with remote controller)

If there is no real solution I will go with with 8.04 and see what happens
Regards
Tony.

Hi

When I run Latency-test without the fix from the terminal I don't see anything reported when the jitter spikes.

You won't, you need to read the FAQ and run the special latency test in the realtime directory.

Support Socket 478 for Pentium® 4, 2.8 GHz

It appears to be a P4 (or something approximating it) , so definitely try the Ubuntu 8.04 based EMC2 Live CD

regards

Yep it is a Celeron.
I tried: Execute /usr/realtime-(kernelversion)-rtai/testsuite/user/latency/run inside a terminal
and yes I substituted the kernel version. Did not work. I don't have the exact error but it seemed to have something to do with the "run" command. Probably something to do with my Linux ignorance.
Just to make my life more interesting it appears that 8.04 live CD does not fit the CD-r's that I have??? Tried under Win "Free and easy burner" and Ubuntu included CD creator....
Let me get some fresh CD-R's even if the ones I have worked for 10.04 which a slightly smaller ISO...
Thanks
Tony

Hi

The iso for 8.04 is actually 2 MB smaller than 10.04 but very close to the 700MB limit of old CDs, might need to use 800MB CDs if your software won't accept it

To write an .iso to CD you can just open a terminal, cd to the directory where the .iso is and enter
cdrecord -v speed=52 fs=16m dev=/dev/sr0 name_of_image.iso

You just need to check what @cdrw and @dvdrw point to in /dev, for 10.04 dev=/dev/sr0 is probably right

I tried: Execute /usr/realtime-(kernelversion)-rtai/testsuite/user/latency/run inside a terminal
and yes I substituted the kernel version. Did not work. I don't have the exact error but it seemed to have something to do with the "run" command. Probably something to do with my Linux ignorance.

You probably didn't use sudo before it. Try just cd /usr/realtime-(kernelversion)-rtai/testsuite/user/latency then sudo ./run

regards

SMI has never been the problem

Hopefully loading 8.04 will cure it, otherwise need to start looking at video etc

With 8.04 not fitting on a standard CD (BTW I downloaded both 8.04 and 10.04 and Linus does show 8.04 2 MB larger) I am a bit stumped. I went as so far as creating a bootable flash drive only to find out that the box allows booting anything from USB other than a flash drive.
Let me run this by you guys. I can create a DVD on my WIN box. If I was to created a system on a hard drive temporary installed on this system and than move the HD to the Linux box what are the chances of success? They are complely diffirent motherboards. Alternatively I would have to convert a SATA CD/DVD to EIDE....
800MB CD's maybe available 60+ miles from me and not garanteed to work on all drives.
Tony