Understanding kernel message 'nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)'

Question

I'm trying to understand the meaning of the following message:

irq N:nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)

Does this mean the IRQ handler not processing the response even it has gotten the interrupt? Or that the scheduler failed to call an irq handler?

In what condition is this happening?

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 13 '12 at 14:27

12

it means that either no handler is registered for that irq or the one that is returned status indicating that the irq was not for him (from hardware he is supporting) in case of shared interrupts probably a faulty HW/FW or buggy driver

answered Dec 13 '12 at 14:27

Raber

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score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 19 '14 at 02:21

Ideally, the above message should be followed by a stack trace, which should help you determine which subsystem is causing the issue. This message means the interrupt handler got stuck due to a overhead, and did not return thus causing the system to disable IRQ#X. This is seen in cases of a buggy firmware.

The irqpoll option needs to be added to grub.conf, which means, when an interrupt is not handled, search all known interrupt handlers for the appropriate handlers and also check all handlers on each timer interrupt. This is sometimes useful to get systems with broken firmware running. The kernel command line in grub.conf should look like the following:

kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda1 quiet irqpoll

Negative: The hardware that caused the interrupt, did NOT get its handler called, so that driver is the one thing that is NOT running..... — rew, Jul 26 '18 at 14:22

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 24 '17 at 09:03

Minimal runnable QEMU example

QEMU has an educational device called edu that generates interrupts, and is perfect to explore this.

First, I have created a minimal Linux PCI device driver for it, which handles the interrupt correctly.

Now we can easily generate the error by commenting out request_irq and free_irq from the code.

Then, if we run the userland program that generates IRQs, we get:

irq 11: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)

followed by a stack trace.

So as others mentioned: unhandled IRQs.

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 18 '14 at 19:05

1

In my case after reloading the driver because the network card had billions of errors in a short period of time.

modprobe -r ixgbe && modprobe ixgbe

lspci showed an unknown device where the 'card' used to be

after a reboot the card disappeared never to be seen again.

So the error might also show failing hardware.

edited Nov 18 '14 at 19:05

tshepang

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answered Aug 26 '13 at 10:20

Riccardo B.

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score -8 · Answer 5 · answered May 29 '17 at 14:51

-8

see here:

static inline int bad_action_ret(irqreturn_t action_ret)
{
    if (likely(action_ret <= (IRQ_HANDLED | IRQ_WAKE_THREAD)))
        return 0;
    return 1;
}

answered May 29 '17 at 14:51

leesagacious

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8

can you add some explanation? – surajs1n May 29 '17 at 15:19
static void poll_spurious_irqs(unsigned long dummy) { struct irq_desc *desc; int i; } – leesagacious Jun 27 '17 at 14:53
100000 interrupt if more than 99000, then the timer will start the continuous polling – leesagacious Jun 27 '17 at 14:56
2

This post needs context. Nothing here makes any sense in isolation. – Score_Under Oct 07 '19 at 16:31

Understanding kernel message 'nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)'

5 Answers5