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comma 4: recurring ADSP_EFAILED + CAM-SENSOR shutdown cluster causes cascading camerad/manager restarts (distinct from #38270) #38518

Description

@khaled-khurram

Title

comma 4: recurring ADSP_EFAILED + CAM-SENSOR shutdown cluster causes cascading camerad/manager restarts (distinct from #38270)

Summary

Over several days of normal driving on a comma 4 (mici hardware), I'm seeing a recurring kernel-level fault cluster: a burst of Qualcomm audio-DSP failures immediately followed by camera-sensor shutdown errors, occasionally severe enough to cascade into multiple full manager.py restarts within minutes. Confirmed via direct dmesg analysis over a multi-day window, not a one-off. This looks related to the general "camera malfunction on comma 4" cluster (e.g. #38270), but the specific kernel signature is different, so filing separately in case it's a distinct root cause worth tracking on its own.

Signature

__q6asm_cmd: DSP returned error[ADSP_EFAILED] opcode 68557
q6asm_callback: cmd = ... returned error = ...
CAM_ERR: CAM-SENSOR: cam_sensor_shutdown: 629  failed destroying dhdl
q6asm_send_cal: cal_block is NULL

The audio-DSP errors and camera-sensor shutdown errors consistently appear together, in tight bursts (bursts of dozens of lines within a few seconds), not as isolated one-off lines.

Scale (from direct dmesg analysis over the current boot, ~3.3 days of continuous uptime)

  • 862 occurrences of ADSP_EFAILED opcode 68557
  • 123 occurrences of cam_sensor_shutdown ... failed destroying dhdl
  • 82 occurrences of q6asm_send_cal: cal_block is NULL
  • Grouped into 71 distinct burst clusters across 4 calendar days: 18, 8, 29, and 16 bursts/day respectively — day-to-day variable, not a steady background rate.

On the two worst days, burst clusters were tight enough (repeated bursts within a few minutes of each other) to cascade into multiple full manager.py process-stack restarts — e.g. 5 restarts in ~82 minutes on one drive, with the gaps between restarts shrinking over the course of the drive (39min → 15min → 17min → 11min).

Downstream user-visible symptoms (inferred from the restart cascade, not independently confirmed as separate bugs)

Each restart briefly re-triggers normal startup-transition alerts that would otherwise only appear once per drive: a brief silent "TAKE CONTROL" flash (manualRestart/low-priority, not a real disengage), transient locationd/torque-parameter-not-ready states, and occasional spurious chime re-announcements — all consistent with genuine repeated process-stack restarts, not separate underlying bugs.

What's been ruled out

  • Thermal: checked deviceState.thermalStatus directly across two separate severe cascade events (different days) — stayed ok in every sample, zero exceptions. Actual temperatures were falling, not rising, over the course of both cascades (e.g. one cascade ran 62-91°C early, dropping to 50-59°C later in the same cascade while instability continued). Ruled out as the driver, at least for this unit.
  • Memory leak: deviceState.memoryUsagePercent shows a normal fill-to-plateau pattern on every restart, resetting cleanly each time — no progressive growth.
  • Software regression on our end: confirmed via git reflog that zero commits were deployed to this device across the entire multi-day window this kept recurring in — the fault rate varied day to day with the exact same code running throughout.
  • Not specific to any fork/customization: found (via a separate historical check of archived route telemetry) a comparably severe restart-cascade cluster on 2026-07-18, confirmed via that route's own initData.gitCommit to be running the literal, unmodified release-mici branch tip — before any of our own commits existed. Also directly diffed our current release-mici-based HEAD against sunnypilot's live release-mici branch tip today: byte-identical, zero drift.

Relation to #38270

Likely the same general hardware-generation issue cluster (comma 4 camera/audio kernel driver flakiness), but the specific signature differs: #38270's attached log shows CAM-ISP congestion/buf_done failures, while this report is CAM-SENSOR shutdown + ADSP audio failures occurring together. Filing separately since I can't confirm they share a root cause, but flagging the relation in case it's useful for whoever's looking at the broader cluster.

Environment

  • Device: comma 4 (mici hardware)
  • Branch: fork of sunnypilot, release-mici base (confirmed byte-identical to sunnypilot's current release-mici branch tip, zero customization to the relevant subsystems), plus unrelated application-layer changes on top (lateral/longitudinal advisory features, no changes to system/camerad/ or audio-related code)
  • AGNOS: 18.4
  • This looks hardware/firmware-level rather than car-specific, so car platform omitted as not load-bearing here

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