Hi,
We run several dual-processor 21264 alpha machines - kernel 2.2.12smp,
RedHat 6.0 - and we'd like to resolve a couple of problems we've been
having with them.
1) They crash every couple of weeks complaining about stuck kernel
spinlocks.
For example:
socket.c:43 spinlock stuck in amd at fffffc00003a6eb8(0) owner
xauth at fffffc000032ae14(1) sched.c:30
Warnings about stuck spinlocks are regularly logged by the kernel, but the
machine usually gets unstuck and carries on. Is there anything we can do
to eliminate this problem?
2) We'd like to use 4GB of physical RAM on one of these machines, but the
current Linux kernel only supports 2GB. The i386 BIGMEM patch doesn't
appear to address our problem either. Is anyone working on native support
for big memory on Alphas?
On a related note, I recently tried compiling a 2.3.26 kernel hoping it
might fix the spinlock problems, but it failed with many errors in
/usr/src/linux/mm/memory.c
Thanks,
Chance
