Serial port problem in Fedora 15

[Gordon Charrick]

I've got a home weather station connected to my computer via a serial 
cable communicating at 9600 baud. I used to have this same setup on a 
different computer running Fedora 14 and it worked just fine. I am 
running this inside a VMware virtual machine running XP. If I use the 
native Linux version of the weather software (which isn't as functional 
as the Windows version, which is why I'm running it in a virtual), I 
still get the same problem.

The serial is a NetMos Technology PCI 9835 Multi-I/O Controller with two 
serial ports.

The problem is that it works for 10-15 minutes and then the kernel shuts 
down the serial port. This is what appears in the messages file:

Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.704991] irq 18: nobody cared (try 
booting with the "irqpoll" option)
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.704995] Pid: 2336, comm: vmware-vmx 
Tainted: P            2.6.38.7-30.fc15.x86_64 #1
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.704996] Call Trace:
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.704997] <IRQ>  [<ffffffff8146dfb8>] 
__report_bad_irq+0x38/0x87
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705007]  [<ffffffff810adf7c>] 
note_interrupt+0x122/0x18e
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705009]  [<ffffffff810aeaa0>] 
handle_fasteoi_irq+0xab/0xd7
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705012]  [<ffffffff8100c0b5>] 
handle_irq+0x88/0x8e
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705015]  [<ffffffff8147bdc5>] 
do_IRQ+0x4d/0xa5
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705018]  [<ffffffff81475d13>] 
ret_from_intr+0x0/0x15
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705019] <EOI>  [<ffffffffa0bc87e4>] ? 
Task_Switch+0x6a1/0xc09 [vmmon]
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705032]  [<ffffffffa0bc9518>] 
Vmx86_RunVM+0x40/0x28a [vmmon]
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705034]  [<ffffffff81474228>] ? 
_cond_resched+0xe/0x22
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705037]  [<ffffffffa0bc1611>] 
LinuxDriver_Ioctl+0x2b9/0xf6a [vmmon]
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705040]  [<ffffffff811ea1b0>] ? 
avc_has_perm+0x51/0x63
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705042]  [<ffffffff811eb273>] ? 
inode_has_perm+0x76/0x8c
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705044]  [<ffffffff811ea737>] ? 
current_has_perm+0x36/0x3b
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705047]  [<ffffffff811eabd0>] ? 
selinux_task_kill+0x4f/0x51
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705049]  [<ffffffff811e85a8>] ? 
security_task_kill+0x16/0x18
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705053]  [<ffffffff81062fa6>] ? 
check_kill_permission+0x128/0x143
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705055]  [<ffffffff811eb32d>] ? 
file_has_perm+0xa4/0xc6
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705058]  [<ffffffffa0bc22da>] 
LinuxDriver_UnlockedIoctl+0x18/0x1c [vmmon]
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705060]  [<ffffffff8112f51c>] 
do_vfs_ioctl+0x47e/0x4bf
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705062]  [<ffffffff8112f5b3>] 
sys_ioctl+0x56/0x7b
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705064]  [<ffffffff81009bc2>] 
system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705065] handlers:
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705066] [<ffffffff812cdea6>] 
(serial8250_interrupt+0x0/0x106)
Jun 17 09:16:09 gmc kernel: [42503.705070] Disabling IRQ #18


Here is what my system shows for interrupt 18:

            CPU0       CPU1       CPU2       CPU3
  18:     200061          0          0          0         
IO-APIC-fasteoi   serial

I've tried moving the board to another PCI slot. That assigns it 
interrupt 19 instead, but the problem is the same.

Any clues on the problem or how to fix it?

-- 
Gordon Charrick