[LinuxPPS] New test release

[Hal V. Engel]

On Wednesday 02 December 2009 09:15:14 am Rodolfo Giometti wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> here you can find a new LinuxPPS test release against kernel
> 2.6.32-rc8:
> 
>   
>  http://ftp.enneenne.com/pub/misc/linuxpps/patches/tests/ntp-pps-v2.6.32-rc
> 8.diff
> 
> Please, test it and report __to me__ the results. Please, send your
> reports __directly to me__ and put the mail list address into Cc.
> 
> Enjoy,
> 
> Rodolfo
> 


I did some testing with this today and I can't get things to work.  I did all 
of the standard stuff including rebuilding ntp to make sure it was in sync with 
the new kernel.  All of the build/install process appeared to work with no 
problems.  But things were not working.  I then rebuilt the kernel with 
debugging messages to see if I could get more info about what is going on.

It appears that at some level it is working but nothing on the user land side 
can see the pps events.  With debugging turned on after I run ldattach I see 
this in my system log:

# tail /var/log/messages
Dec  5 18:21:18 office kernel: PPS assert at 4294987043 on source #0
Dec  5 18:21:19 office kernel: PPS event on source 0 at 1260066079.184500614
Dec  5 18:21:19 office kernel: capture clear seq #323 for source 0
Dec  5 18:21:19 office kernel: PPS clear at 4294987063 on source #0
Dec  5 18:21:19 office kernel: PPS event on source 0 at 1260066079.985613709
Dec  5 18:21:19 office kernel: capture assert seq #324 for source 0
Dec  5 18:21:19 office kernel: PPS assert at 4294987143 on source #0
Dec  5 18:21:20 office kernel: PPS event on source 0 at 1260066080.184557096
Dec  5 18:21:20 office kernel: capture clear seq #324 for source 0
Dec  5 18:21:20 office kernel: PPS clear at 4294987163 on source #0

So it is generating assert and clear events.

I also noticed that the wiki page says that ldattach needs to be patched but 
that the patch might be included in the development repositories of linux-
utils-ng (it is not in git at this point) so I patched and installed the git 
version.  This did not affect the behavior at all.

This is what I see in my clockstats file:

55171 8158.038 127.127.30.0 ONCORE DRIVER -- CONFIGURING
55171 8158.043 127.127.30.0 state = ONCORE_NO_IDEA
55171 8158.043 127.127.30.0 PPSAPI not found in kernel

and ntp.log:

5 Dec 18:15:58 ntpd[17421]: configuration of 127.127.30.0 failed
5 Dec 18:15:58 ntpd[17421]: frequency initialized -39.074 PPM from 
/var/log/ntp/ntp.drift

As you can see ntp is not seeing the pps sources and in fact concludes that 
the kernel does not support PPS. Reg might be able to provide some feedback 
about when that message is generated.  In addition when I try to test this 
with ppstest I get:

# ppstest /dev/pps0
trying PPS source "/dev/pps0"
cannot create a PPS source from device "/dev/pps0" (Operation not supported)

When looking at this everything looks like it should work.  Running ldattach 
creates the pps device and it starts sending assert and clear events but no 
user land tools are seeing these.  I have UDEV setup to create all of the 
correct symlinks needed by the Oncore driver and I have verified that this is 
happening.

# ls -l /dev/oncore*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Dec  5 20:40 /dev/oncore.pps.0 -> pps0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 Dec  5 10:13 /dev/oncore.serial.0 -> ttyS1

I am not sure why this is not working.  Perhaps I messed something up or 
perhaps there is something wrong with the patches.  Anyone have any ideas?

Hal