Ubuntu's Laptop Killing Bug Fixed

jeevesbond writes "Back in October of 2007 we discussed a bug that would dramatically shorten the life of laptops using Ubuntu. Ubuntu users will be glad to know that a fix has finally been released for Ubuntu versions 9.04, 8.10 and 8.04 (LTS). However, as this fix is not yet in the update repositories, anyone wishing to test it should follow these instructions for enabling the 'proposed' repository. Report your results on the original bug report. Happy testing!"

Comments

As per "Flamebait Story"

[Creepy Crawler]

Well, one can squarely blame the HD manufacturers (look at the Seagate disaster) and say they need to fix their hardware.

However, when your stuff doesnt work, regardless who's fault it is, it's still broken. And in cases like Ubuntu vs Windows: it'll work in Windows and not work in Ubuntu. Who do you think the user will fault?

ObUserStory: I bought a T61 Thinkpad. Worked fine in Windows, and not so well in Ubuntu. What didnt work? The right side USB ports. If I was a regular user, I'd remove Ubuntu and put Windows back on. However, Im stubborn... and know that Linux shouldnt go disabling ports at seemingly random. Turns out, it was a ACPI bios bug that did so :( So a BIOS update did the trick and fixed everything.

So yes, it may be a manufacturers fault, but that's not where the blame gets placed all the time..

Re:As per "Flamebait Story"

[friedman101]

I never begrudged Ubuntu (or Linux in general) for having a bug related to a problem that was largely the fault of the hardware manufacturer. What did piss me off, however, was the fact that a bug that affected most new laptops and threatened to shorten their lifetimes dramatically wasn't plastered all over ubuntu.com in huge red font. We'd have never given Microsoft this much leeway.

Re:As per "Flamebait Story"

[Creepy Crawler]

As per defense of Ubuntu and others, the e1000 module was blacklisted until a proper kernel patch could be applied to all versions.

Without the blacklist, the e1000 firmware could be overwritten. Intel provided no safeguards to prevent said occurrence, so destruction of hardware was imminent. Far as I can tell, the Windows driver still has this bug.

And I remember the Mandrake CD-drive killer sequence. Samne damn problem: unguarded firmware update commands. Instead, these commands are legit commands, but were re-used as a firmware update.

Now, how much of these drive killer and card killer commands are also on Windows, but we suspect them as other occurrences, like ESD, lightning, or power surges?

Re:As per "Flamebait Story"

[Creepy Crawler]

Wrong.

When using Windows as an example, the developers do not understand how Windows works. They only can understand by extensive testing in their labs. Linux, on the other hand, can identify what piece of code the offense is made, and fix it.

The collection of bugs in Windows makes it that much harder when there's a bluescreen, general hardware crash, or other really bad things. As far as we know, these bugs that exist in Ubuntu, Mandrake and others still exist as some sort of weird failure domain of certain celestial events on Windows. When they happen, there's hundreds of environmental variables set to trigger the device_killer.

Re:As per "Flamebait Story"

[lukas.mach]

You're writing "Wrong", but what you say isn't really in conflict with what I wrote. Yes, it's easier for a given developer to fix a bug in Linux software or in kernel/driver. Yes it's easier for them to achieve the perfect state where everything works according to specification/protocol. But when the ethernet card decides for no particular reason to send 1101 instead of 1100 every once in a couple of kBs, it's going to be a bigger deal in a cleanly designed system than in a self-repairing pile of junk.

Given that these kind of bugs will be corrected only when the manufacturers will sell more than say 25% of it's hardware to Linux clients, I humbly predict that these bugs will be fixe in approximately infinity years.

Re:As per "Flamebait Story"

[epine]

Here's another way to phrase that:

However, when you attribute blame to a faultless party, regardless of whether you have a legitimate beef, you're just an uneducated whinging windbag.

I've never understood why false blame is regarded as an inalienable force of nature. I recall from my grade three classroom the glee that ensued whenever anybody cut a ripe one at the amazing ease of hanging the blame on any arbitrary person remotely in the upwind quadrant. You just had to be first at putting forward an arbitrary name. "Hey, Marvin, you didn't!" and Marvin would have to be very quick to deflect the hot potato.

We learn the social rules surrounding this game of arbitrary blamesmanship at the vulnerable age when children assimilate the religious beliefs of their parents. Along with everything else we learn at that age, it's rarely questioned again, apart from a Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut here or there with vinegar wit.

Clearly, now that the problem is known, Ubuntu should remediate it as best as possible, or they will deserve their share of the blame.

Still, I find it shocking how easily society accepts the notion that any person feeling abused and disempowered is entirely within their rights to arbitrarily point their finger at the nearest upwind party.

Re:As per "Flamebait Story"

[Televiper2000]

To put it succinctly. The person who sold you the package is the one that's responsible for it working. If they are using third party hardware/drivers/software they take on the responsibility as far as your package goes. So if something goes wrong you talk to them, and they find a solution. Now, that solution might mean kicking the third party vendors until they cough up a solution, it might mean designing a work around, it might mean dropping that third party vendor, or it might mean attaching a notification for their customers. In this case Ubuntu's responsible because they're the ones providing you with the package that makes your laptop work. It's their job to identify poorly written drivers and deal with the vendors. If they can't deal with the vendors then they have to deal with it in another way, even if it's handing you the package with a warning. It's the "too f'n bad" rule.

misleading

[bytor4232]

The title and article summary is misleading. It shortens the life of the hard drive, not the laptop itself. Hard drives are cheap, and on most laptops as easy to swap out as the battery with screwdriver in hand.

Its not like Ubuntu is killing the motherboard or screen, its the Hard Drive.

Re:misleading

[exi1ed0ne]

Hard drives are cheap

While that may be true, my time isn't. Getting the lappy set up and restored from backup > 0.

hmm.

[buddyglass]

Does it bother anyone that Ubuntu, the community's duly annointed challenger to Microsoft hegemony, had an outstanding bug for fourteen months whose effect was to damage hardware? That's pretty terrible.

Re:hmm.

[ConceptJunkie]

When Ubuntu is competing against an OS which has been a vector for millions of computers to be compromised over the last 10+ years and has caused untold billions of dollars of damage and wasted billions of hours of people's time, I think it's not a bad track record.

More Linux Zealotry

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ridiculous. I've been running Ubuntu all this time and didn't know about this. I now have to check my install and see if I'm affected.

It may be time to stop dual booting, reclaim Vista Business' HD space, and run an Ubuntu vm.

If this were Windows messing up people's hard drives, you would all be all over it. But since it's Ubuntu, it's the hardware makers' fault.

Re:More Linux Zealotry

[Anonymous Coward]

For something that was all over the internet, it took an awfully long time to fix.

Re:More Linux Zealotry

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Reading the posts prior to yours, it seems like most people are saying that Ubuntu really should have fixed this or worked around it, and that there's no excuse.

But it's much easier to jump straight to the conclusion, isn't it? Facts do tend to get in the way...

Re:More Linux Zealotry

[Anonymous Coward]

>if this were Windows messing up people's hard drives, you would all be all over it

Who does that 'YOU' refer to?

Do you really think it are the same people? Haven't you realised by now that there are windows-trolls, linux-zealots, apple-masturbationists and sane people?

I don't blame Microsoft for the crapware vendors install. I don't blame Ubuntu for not magically working around bugs in undocumented hardware.

You, on the other hand. Want to make this Ubuntu's fault, because linux-trolls would make it Microsoft fault it this happened on windows.

So, guess which of the four categories you belong to?

Hello, Mr. Microsoft-Troll.

Is it? An EeePC owner ponders....

[bornagainpenguin]

What if the user has an ASUS EeePC, or other netbook like device with SSD hard disk or even a regular platter based hard disk in a incredibly difficult to reach location? This could still prove to be a laptop killer for many users and it is incredibly dishonest to pretend any differently. Oh and before anyone gets any ideas, look at my username, understand that this is being posted from Ubuntu Hardy Heron and I am quite happy with my Linux experience. I just don't think its fair to pretend this is any less serious than it actually is.

--bornagainpenguin

Re:Only for who think the world has to be perfect

[ethana2]

Apple says 'hi'.

Re:Only for who think the world has to be perfect

[laddiebuck]

Obviously. But the story's still flamebait. Want a non-flamebait title? "Ubuntu Workaround for Laptop-Killing BIOS Bug Released". See the difference? Subtle but important.

Actually it is M$ fault

[CustomDesigned]

well, in a way. The problem is that the drive makers optimized their power saving algorithms for Windows disk access patterns - as you would expect them to since it is 85% of the market. And they didn't provide knobs to twist for other OSes - including new, more efficient versions of Windows.

The irony is that Linux runs afoul of the hard drive power saving tuning because it is too efficient. The gaps between disk accesses are too long, and trigger a head unload while the OS is still active.

The best fix would be to twist a knob to adjust the inactivity timer - but that isn't available. So the simplest fix is to disable power saving on the disk - fine for laptops used as portable desktops. To keep drive power saving without unloading/loading the heads constantly, you have to configure "laptop mode", which uses memory to cache reads/collect writes so as to provide something like 30 minutes between disk accesses for typical word processing/browsing activities.

I've thought about writing a background process (in python or your favorite script language) that monitors iostat - and reads a raw sector every 9 seconds to keep the disk from thinking we are inactive. At the same time, we have our own Linux oriented inactivity timer, and stop reading the raw sectors when the system is truly inactive (other than our own reads).

Re:Only Ubuntu?

[Erpo]

(Yes, believe it or not, there ARE other distros; although it is hard to tell since so many stories and postings say "Ubuntu" in place of the word "Linux" or "Linux distribution")

Isn't it great? I can't wait until the days of users asking, "So I should try Linux. Which distro should I use?" and getting useless or contradictory answers are long forgotten.

Re:Only for who think the world has to be perfect

[zullnero]

How can this be modded "insightful"? When systems break down that run other OS's, the hardware or drivers are typically blamed. That's fair territory. But when it's Linux, the double standard kicks in and it's the OS's fault? If the hardware manufacturers aren't supplying proper workarounds or fixes, or aren't even providing the source for their BIOS/Drivers/whatever to the folks who are apparently now expected to fix it, then how the hell are they supposed to make it all work? Magic wands? Insightful my ass. I'd mod this "ignorant".

Re:Only Ubuntu?

[markdavis]

Yes, choice, variety, and competition are horrible things aren't they? Certainly we should have all been stuck with only SLS Linux or perhaps only Redhat Linux..... hell, why even have Linux at all; why couldn't the status quo of MS-Windows or MS-DOS sufficed?

There were distros just as good (or better in different ways) before Ubuntu existed. There are distros just as good (or better in different ways) than Ubuntu now. There will probably be other distros later- maybe of which will be just as good or better, too.

The practice of generally substituting the word "Ubuntu" for "Linux" in postings, comments, stories, etc, is not only annoying, it is insulting to the many thousands of people who have contributed to Linux (GNU/Linux) and all the non-Ubuntu distributions.

Re:Only for who think the world has to be perfect

[blazerw]

"Ubuntu Workaround for Laptop-Killing BIOS Bug Released"

That title's not quite right. The bug points to a workaround that has existed since the bug was initially reported. Maybe this title: "With new update, Ubuntu make Laptop-Killing BIOS bug workaround automatic".

Re:Only for who think the world has to be perfect

[LingNoi]

Except that's bullshit.

1) Make any claim on slashdot that a program or piece of hardware doesn't work on windows.
2) Watch as apologists claim that it's not windows fault but bad drivers or bad application.
3) Watch as how people make similar claim about Linux and suddenly the blame is placed squarely on Linux.

There was a news story last week "Ubuntu made women quit online classes" or some similar title, where a women ordered an Ubuntu laptop, didn't even try it out and the news station she got in contact with blamed ubuntu for everything even though it worked out the box.

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