[PLUG] serial 18250: too much work for irq17

[Richard C. Steffens]

(This is odd. The update I sent after sending this made it through to 
the list, but this didn't.)

I just installed Ubuntu 12.07 on a Dell Dimension 2400. Before the 
install I replaced the single stick of 512 MB DDR 333 with two sticks of 
1 GB DDR 333 that I picked up at Free Geek, yesterday. A few days 
earlier I tried to run the live CD, but it didn't seem to like having 
only 512 MB -- at least that's what I thought. I don't know if a dirty 
DVD drive might have affected things, though.

Anyway, my first attempt failed partway through due to the DVD drive 
being unable to read the CD. I disconnected the first DVD drive, 
connected the cable to the second drive and tried again. This time the 
install mostly completed. But, when I pulled out the CD and hit <ENTER> 
nothing happened for several minutes. Then I got an error message that said:

     Alert! /dev/disk/by-uuid/82df63b6-8b97-4287-ae1b-db29565f5370 does 
not exist.

and I was dropped into the ash shell. Typing exit for some reason 
allowed the system to finish booting. However, the next attempt to boot 
didn't do anything, not even the above error message. I powered down 
again, powered back up, pressed F12 to get a boot menu, chose 7, "Boot 
to a utility partition" (or words to that effect). I got the GRUB menu 
and chose the first option. I got the above Alert! error, again. This 
time, when I typed exit, I got 23 lines of a new error message, each one 
with a different number inside the brackets:


[ 235.928013] serial 18250: too much work for irq17
[ 238.580018] serial 18250: too much work for irq17
[ 238.596019] serial 18250: too much work for irq17
<...>
[ 250.216172] serial 18250: too much work for irq17

Internet searching turned up that error message several times, all with 
different solutions that did or did not work for those posting.

Could this be related to the card providing SATA support for the single 
hard drive? There is a 160 GB SATA drive hanging on that card.

One of the search results said that by removing the telephone modem card 
the problem went away. Replies to that post said it didn't work for 
them. I'll give this a try, since I don't have a need for the modem 
card, but it sounds dubious.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens