[ILUG] Mandrake - it works....but why?

[Bryan O'Donoghue]

Barry Redmond wrote:
> I've had USB problems on my installation of Mandrake 10.1, and lots of 
> googling around has led me to think that there's a fundamental USB 
> interrupt handling problem in there somewhere.  
> 
> I haven't seen any good explanation or solution of the problem 
> anywhere.  There are various reports of USB device communication 
> problems, sometimes with "Control timeout on ep0out" (or ep0in) 
> errors.  My particular incarnation was a USB printer problem.
> 
> One suggested fix (can't remember where) was to use noapic at boot.  
> In my case this did indeed fix the USB problem, but then any attempt to 
> logout or shutdown via the KDE dialogue caused the machine to 
> lockup ... !!??  I removed the noapic switch, and sometime later I 
> realised that the USB printer was working.  I still get occasional 
> problems, but  usually fixed by power cycling the printer.
> 
> Not very reassuring behaviour.  If I'd wanted this kind of thing I would 
> have stuck with Windows.


That's quite surprising from where I sit. True, Linux might be _close_ 
to totally perfect, but, even the best systems in the world have warts.[1]

Just checking up on which kernel Mandrake uses, I think your version 
should be 2.6.8.1-12mdk... notice the -12mdk appendation denoting that 
this kernel is not a vanilla release, but a release that Mandrake 
themselves have put together and thus should not be the yardstick you 
measure ftp.kernel.org releases by. I suspect quite strongly, that if 
you take the time to go and get the latest vanilla 2.6 from 
http://ftp.kernel.org and engage with compiling your own, it is quite 
likely this problem can/may be made to go away.

If you don't feel up to doing that, I would suggest you try an 
alternative distrobution, Fedora Core 3 and SuSE sprining to mind as the 
optimum alternatives.


Bryan

[1] Plug