serial 18250: too much work for irq 17

[Raistlin355]

Ok so I installed Ubuntu 9.10 ran all the updates first thing and didn't update since (a few hours) and got it configured the way I want it. I left it running and went to a movie, when I came back everything seemed to be fine, it was still up and responsive, no resource leaks, no problems at all, I even rebooted it a few times during the setup, again no problems AT ALL. Until I shut it down. When I did that and then turned the computer on again, I noticed it was booting REALLY slow, example it takes about 20 secs to draw the grub menu on the screen. I did recovery mode from the grub menu and thats when I found this:

serial 18250: too much work for irq 17

just scrolling up the screen. So I went into the bios and disabled everything I didn't need to boot (its an old Dell so my power in bios is limited) the pci slots, serial ports, parallel ports, usb everything I could think of the MIGHT use irq17, but to no avail, the same problem persisted. I did try to run a live cd but even that won't boot, and I know it worked fine earlier today, and yesterday. I am about ready to chalk this one up to catastrophic hardware failure, but before I do that does anyone maybe have any insight at all about this?

[Raistlin355]

No ideas anyone? Oh well it was an old pos computer anyway.

[Axos]

This is probably a USELESS suggestion so feel free to ignore it.

Way back in the dark ages when minicomputers would have dozens of dumb serial terminals connected to them, I remember reading on USENET that leaving a long serial cable connected to a serial port with no terminal on the other end could cause a floating signal that would generate continuous interrupts and severely impact the minicomputer. With that in mind, I would suggest opening the computer and reseating all the connectors you can find, especially the ones to the I/O ports.

Furthermore, you might also try connecting some serial device (like an external modem, if you still happen to have one around) to the serial port(s) and powering it up (the modem as well as the computer) and seeing if that solves the problem. It shouldn't be necessary, of course. But if something is marginal in the computer, it might help eliminate the floating signal.

Again, this may all be completely worthless. But it might be worth a try if you want to salvage this computer.

[Raistlin355]

Hmm this would be an interesting solution. I will give it a try and see what happens, unfortunately I don't have ANY serial devices anymore so it will have to wait till I find one.
Actually I just thought of something. Can you get a terminator for a serial connection? I wonder if that would have the same effect as plugging in a device.

[wstout]

I have this exact same problem on a dell also. Was not a problem in earlier releases and also no problem on the livecd. Other distros work ok also without this issue.

[Raistlin355]

I have this exact same problem on a dell also. Was not a problem in earlier releases and also no problem on the livecd. Other distros work ok also without this issue.

Hmm I saw your post, I had all but forgotten about this issue since the computer is now replaced and the old one is getting tossed soon, just for the hell of it I will pull it out and see if I can make heads or tails of this.

[robbielink]

I have this problem on a Dell Dimension 2400 since upgrading to karmic 9.10 (and other problems, too)

[Raistlin355]

I have this problem on a Dell Dimension 2400 since upgrading to karmic 9.10 (and other problems, too)

But can you "downgrade" to previous versions of ubuntu or anything else? Cause since this problem happened I haven't been able to use ANYTHING else including Windows.

[nunyez]

I have this same error on my xubuntu jaunty with latest updates, dimension 2400 Anyone???

[linkxs]

I have this problem too, and also if I don't switch to TTY1 during boot it'll freeze. Really annoying.