4.7.0-rc2

[Paul Mansfield]

On 12 June 2016 at 15:16, Nicolas Huillard <nicolas at huillard.net> wrote:
> I'm still here. I wonder if your crash problems are tied to some patches
> or the fact that you use an internal SD card for the system.

I'm beginning to think so. Robert's install is all in the eMMC and he
doesn't seem to have half the problems using kernel later than 4.4

> I have no stability issues with your latest 64 bit kernel. I don't use
> the internal Wifi though. My setup :
> * 64 bits kernel on the internal eMMC (broken Windows 8.1 as of now,
> I'll probably reclaim the partition someday and leave Windows behind)

> * no swap partition (because of windows)

I have a 512M swap partition on the microSD card

> * no internal Wifi, bluetooth, sound, backlight, etc.

I think Robert is mitigating SDIO wifi problems by shutting it down
when not in use

> * I use a TP-Link USB ethernet dongle

When WiFi stopped working, I was able to use the microUSB slot with an
OTG adaptor to give the tablet working wifi, rather than use the
dock's USB port.

Robert found there's a 8723 based USB adaptor with wifi and bluetooth.
It'd be ironic if that works really well, in contrast with the SDIO
version.

> * I also tried connecting my phone via USB to use it's network tethering
> (both Wifi and 3G), which works very well
>
> I am able to use the device quite reliably. I wonder if your problem of
> random crashes are only due to using the SD card (storage is clearly
> something that is used randomly, even when you're not actively using the
> device).

I am coming to that conclusion.  I had been hoping that finally
updating my firmware to 5.20 would make things better. Hasn't helped
as far as I can tell :-(

In reading some of the bug reports about sound suggests that the you
get interrupt mapping problems which can affect the SDHC port and
presumbly the SDIO interface(s) too. So I guess if you can confine the
device to be just CPU + RAM + eMMC + display + USB, and leave
everything else inactive, there's simply less chance of it collapsing.

We also have a friend who's a linux guru, we're hoping he'll buy one
too, he's pretty sure that the ACPI DSDT tables are probably wrong
which is likely to be causing the hardware to be set up wrongly.