No interrupts

[Warner Losh <imp@village.org>]

OK.  I've let the machine run overnight (and it didn't ever finish).
The problem is that it is stuck in the following kernel code:

        printk("Calibrating delay loop.. ");
        while (loops_per_sec <<= 1) {
                /* wait for "start of" clock tick */
                ticks = jiffies;
                while (ticks == jiffies)
printk("Jiffies = %d\r", jiffies ) /* nothing */;
                /* Go .. */
                ticks = jiffies;
                __delay(loops_per_sec);
                ticks = jiffies - ticks;
                if (ticks)
                        break;
                }

Will just print Jiffies = 0 forever :-(

I'm at a loss to understand why this is happening to me.  The
declaration looks correct to me:

include/linux/sched.h: extern unsigned long volatile jiffies;

so it likely is the case that I'm not taking interrupts that cause the
jiffies count to be incremented.

Any ideas on what to look for?  I've gone ahead and added a sti() just
before the while loop, so I know interrupts are enabled.

I've not (yet) upgraded to 1.5.59, but a quick peek at the patches
doesn't reveal anything that looked like it would help the situation.

There must be something different between the 1.2.9ish kernel that I
had working before and this one....

Anyway, I'd love to hear any ideas that people have...

Warner