Re: Oracle 8I & Kernel 2.4.3 : Sane ?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 02:12:40PM +0200, Yann Dupont wrote: > Is oracle 8.1.5 + Kernel 2.4.3 a sane combination ? > In general is oracle + Kernel 2.4 working ? 2.4.3 I can't speak for, but we have been running our development server (Oracle 8.1.6) on 2.4.2 since the day it was released. No problems whatsoever. I'd recommend consulting the Oracle docs as to what is screwed with your rollback segments. I highly doubt this is Linux's fault. - -- Stephen Clouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. <http://www.theiqgroup.com/> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOsmDOwOGqGs0PadnEQI0qQCdFS+PLvff8YxstOUAB33gSoyRsfkAoKeP n87LAwm5FrYIjFG8/WXh0IEh =LCx9 -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Oracle 8I Kernel 2.4.3 : Sane ?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 02:12:40PM +0200, Yann Dupont wrote: Is oracle 8.1.5 + Kernel 2.4.3 a sane combination ? In general is oracle + Kernel 2.4 working ? 2.4.3 I can't speak for, but we have been running our development server (Oracle 8.1.6) on 2.4.2 since the day it was released. No problems whatsoever. I'd recommend consulting the Oracle docs as to what is screwed with your rollback segments. I highly doubt this is Linux's fault. - -- Stephen Clouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. http://www.theiqgroup.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOsmDOwOGqGs0PadnEQI0qQCdFS+PLvff8YxstOUAB33gSoyRsfkAoKeP n87LAwm5FrYIjFG8/WXh0IEh =LCx9 -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Bug in the file attributes ?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 08:20:32PM +, Xavier Ordoquy wrote: > This is in the user home directory. > Since the file is read only for the user, it should not be able to remove > it. Moreover, the user can't write to test. > So I think this is a bug. You have failed to RTFM. There is no bug here. http://www.linuxdoc.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/x1955.html#AEN2242 - -- Stephen Clouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. <http://www.theiqgroup.com/> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOsOC1gOGqGs0PadnEQJtVwCgm23nRu0O14SwWvxjZDulld8m24YAn2vb yHGvzJR10oC1dabikTezfX+3 =TlMz -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Bug in the file attributes ?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 08:20:32PM +, Xavier Ordoquy wrote: This is in the user home directory. Since the file is read only for the user, it should not be able to remove it. Moreover, the user can't write to test. So I think this is a bug. You have failed to RTFM. There is no bug here. http://www.linuxdoc.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/x1955.html#AEN2242 - -- Stephen Clouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. http://www.theiqgroup.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOsOC1gOGqGs0PadnEQJtVwCgm23nRu0O14SwWvxjZDulld8m24YAn2vb yHGvzJR10oC1dabikTezfX+3 =TlMz -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 09:45:01PM -0800, Stephen Satchell wrote: > If you have a mission-critical application running on your box, add it to > the inittab file with the RESPAWN attribute. That way, OOM killer kills > it, init notices it, and init restarts your server. Ah, that's great for simple daemons. Now tell me how to help an app like this (Oracle exampled here): oracle 89 0.0 0.4 41076 1776 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_pmon_slash oracle 91 0.0 0.6 40676 2620 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_dbw0_slash oracle 93 0.0 0.4 40544 1788 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_lgwr_slash oracle 95 0.0 0.4 40544 1744 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_ckpt_slash oracle 97 0.0 1.1 40556 4404 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_smon_slash oracle 99 0.0 0.5 40536 2188 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_reco_slash oracle 101 0.0 0.4 40656 1756 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_arc0_slash In this example, when oom_kill reaps one of these autonomous threads, Oracle opts to crash and burn. Database corruption is almost guaranteed. In all reality, I'm sure any daemon (threads or no) that works heavily with disk files is likely to screw itself and its data if it gets sigkilled for no reason. And in our environment, there is no reason for it to get sigkilled. I'm going to severely hurt the first person that says such a program should be *expecting* random untrappable annihilation of its threads. (And what happens when the master process *is* the target?) - -- Stephen Clouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. <http://www.theiqgroup.com/> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOr2XDgOGqGs0PadnEQK0rACfQELDid11+m90bS/DrGyrsHW45ZEAn19G mL3fSCdi2TeHDxGLA8uXT8l5 =oQPV -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 09:45:01PM -0800, Stephen Satchell wrote: If you have a mission-critical application running on your box, add it to the inittab file with the RESPAWN attribute. That way, OOM killer kills it, init notices it, and init restarts your server. Ah, that's great for simple daemons. Now tell me how to help an app like this (Oracle exampled here): oracle 89 0.0 0.4 41076 1776 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_pmon_slash oracle 91 0.0 0.6 40676 2620 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_dbw0_slash oracle 93 0.0 0.4 40544 1788 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_lgwr_slash oracle 95 0.0 0.4 40544 1744 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_ckpt_slash oracle 97 0.0 1.1 40556 4404 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_smon_slash oracle 99 0.0 0.5 40536 2188 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_reco_slash oracle 101 0.0 0.4 40656 1756 ?SMar22 0:00 ora_arc0_slash In this example, when oom_kill reaps one of these autonomous threads, Oracle opts to crash and burn. Database corruption is almost guaranteed. In all reality, I'm sure any daemon (threads or no) that works heavily with disk files is likely to screw itself and its data if it gets sigkilled for no reason. And in our environment, there is no reason for it to get sigkilled. I'm going to severely hurt the first person that says such a program should be *expecting* random untrappable annihilation of its threads. (And what happens when the master process *is* the target?) - -- Stephen Clouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. http://www.theiqgroup.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOr2XDgOGqGs0PadnEQK0rACfQELDid11+m90bS/DrGyrsHW45ZEAn19G mL3fSCdi2TeHDxGLA8uXT8l5 =oQPV -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 01:33:50AM +0100, Martin Dalecki wrote: > AMEN! TO THIS! > Uptime of a process is a much better mesaure for a killing candidate > then it's size. Thing is, if you take a good study of mm/oom_kill.c, it *does* take start time into account, as well as CPU time. The problem is that a process (like Oracle, in our case) using ludicrous amounts of memory can still rank at the top of the list, even with the time-based reduction factors, because total VM is the starting number in the equation for determining what to kill. Oracle or what not sitting at 80 MB for a day or two will still find a way to outrank the newly-started 1 MB shell process whose malloc triggered oom_kill in the first place. If anything, time really needs to be a hard criterion for sorting the final list on and not merely a variable in the equation and thus tied to vmsize. This is why the production database boxen aren't running 2.4 yet. I can control Oracle's usage very finely (since it uses a fixed memory pool preallocated at startup), but if something else decides to fire up on there (like the nightly backup and maintenance routine) and decides it needs just a pinch more memory than what's available -- ick. 2.2.x doesn't appear to enforce new memory allocation with a sniper rifle -- the new process just suffers a pleasant ("Out of memory!") or violent (SIGSEGV) death. - -- Stephen Clouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. <http://www.theiqgroup.com/> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOrqW3wOGqGs0PadnEQLZUwCfWTr8HwAChQamWWvWWzZcX5DZ8PAAnROB Ja25OAQu3W1h7Ck0SU/TfKj8 =VlQt -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:47:27PM +0100, Guest section DW wrote: > Last week I installed SuSE 7.1 somewhere. > During the install: "VM: killing process rpm", > leaving the installer rather confused. > (An empty machine, 256MB, 144MB swap, I think 2.2.18.) > > Last month I had a computer algebra process running for a week. > Killed. But this computation was the only task this machine had. > Its sole reason of existence. > Too bad - zero information out of a week's computation. > (I think 2.4.0.) > > Clearly, Linux cannot be reliable if any process can be killed > at any moment. I am not happy at all with my recent experiences. Really the whole oom_kill process seems bass-ackwards to me. I can't in my mind logically justify annihilating large-VM processes that have been running for days or weeks instead of just returning ENOMEM to a process that just started up. We run Oracle on a development box here, and it's always the first to get the axe (non-root process using 70-80 MB VM). Whenever someone's testing decides to run away with memory, I usually spend the rest of the day getting intimate with the backup files, since SIGKILLing random Oracle processes, as you might have guessed, has a tendency to rape the entire database. It would be nice to give immunity to certain uids, or better yet, just turn the damn thing off entirely. I've already hacked that in...errr, out. - -- Stephen Clouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. <http://www.theiqgroup.com/> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOrpgbgOGqGs0PadnEQLp5QCfZMwtDZRNwYQ6RJX0MJ8lRVHTj3YAoNlt pFWT2i+2y+Yze/6EYy9V0oaE =QIrK -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:47:27PM +0100, Guest section DW wrote: Last week I installed SuSE 7.1 somewhere. During the install: "VM: killing process rpm", leaving the installer rather confused. (An empty machine, 256MB, 144MB swap, I think 2.2.18.) Last month I had a computer algebra process running for a week. Killed. But this computation was the only task this machine had. Its sole reason of existence. Too bad - zero information out of a week's computation. (I think 2.4.0.) Clearly, Linux cannot be reliable if any process can be killed at any moment. I am not happy at all with my recent experiences. Really the whole oom_kill process seems bass-ackwards to me. I can't in my mind logically justify annihilating large-VM processes that have been running for days or weeks instead of just returning ENOMEM to a process that just started up. We run Oracle on a development box here, and it's always the first to get the axe (non-root process using 70-80 MB VM). Whenever someone's testing decides to run away with memory, I usually spend the rest of the day getting intimate with the backup files, since SIGKILLing random Oracle processes, as you might have guessed, has a tendency to rape the entire database. It would be nice to give immunity to certain uids, or better yet, just turn the damn thing off entirely. I've already hacked that in...errr, out. - -- Stephen Clouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. http://www.theiqgroup.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOrpgbgOGqGs0PadnEQLp5QCfZMwtDZRNwYQ6RJX0MJ8lRVHTj3YAoNlt pFWT2i+2y+Yze/6EYy9V0oaE =QIrK -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [PATCH] Prevent OOM from killing init
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 01:33:50AM +0100, Martin Dalecki wrote: AMEN! TO THIS! Uptime of a process is a much better mesaure for a killing candidate then it's size. Thing is, if you take a good study of mm/oom_kill.c, it *does* take start time into account, as well as CPU time. The problem is that a process (like Oracle, in our case) using ludicrous amounts of memory can still rank at the top of the list, even with the time-based reduction factors, because total VM is the starting number in the equation for determining what to kill. Oracle or what not sitting at 80 MB for a day or two will still find a way to outrank the newly-started 1 MB shell process whose malloc triggered oom_kill in the first place. If anything, time really needs to be a hard criterion for sorting the final list on and not merely a variable in the equation and thus tied to vmsize. This is why the production database boxen aren't running 2.4 yet. I can control Oracle's usage very finely (since it uses a fixed memory pool preallocated at startup), but if something else decides to fire up on there (like the nightly backup and maintenance routine) and decides it needs just a pinch more memory than what's available -- ick. 2.2.x doesn't appear to enforce new memory allocation with a sniper rifle -- the new process just suffers a pleasant ("Out of memory!") or violent (SIGSEGV) death. - -- Stephen Clouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Programmer, IQ Coordinator Project Lead The IQ Group, Inc. http://www.theiqgroup.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBOrqW3wOGqGs0PadnEQLZUwCfWTr8HwAChQamWWvWWzZcX5DZ8PAAnROB Ja25OAQu3W1h7Ck0SU/TfKj8 =VlQt -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
2.4.0 oops bdflush
We have a development SMP machine which runs a myriad of server applications for our development purposes -- Apache, Oracle, several others. Under 2.4.0 the machine locks up, seemingly at random. Usually it simply stops responding without fanfare -- you can, oddly enough, switch consoles with Alt+F?, but typing gets no response and all network services have stopped responding. However, on the most recent failure I was lucky enough to find that it had managed to spit out a kernel oops message before biting it, which I have (hopefully) decoded (properly): root@fs1:/usr/src/linux.2.4.0# ksymoops -v /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/vmlinux -m \ /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/System.map -o /lib/modules/2.4.0/ ksymoops 2.3.7 on i686 2.2.18. Options used -v /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/vmlinux (specified) -k /proc/ksyms (default) -l /proc/modules (default) -o /lib/modules/2.4.0/ (specified) -m /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/System.map (specified) Error (regular_file): read_ksyms stat /proc/ksyms failed ksymoops: No such file or directory No modules in ksyms, skipping objects No ksyms, skipping lsmod Reading Oops report from the terminal invalid operand: CPU:0 EIP:0010:[] EFLAGS: 00010296 eax: 001c ebx: c1068518 ecx: edx: 0026 esi: c10684fc edi: 021c ebp: 0001 esp: c14f9fa4 ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018 Process bdflush (pid: 5, stackpage=c14f9000) Stack: c01f9865 c01f9a24 0299 c14f8000 c01fb96e 0008e000 0004 0040 0110 c01369c2 0007 00010f00 cff93f84 cff93fd0 0008e000 c0107507 cff93fbc cff93fbc cff93fbc Call Trace: [] [] Code: 0f 0b 83 c4 0c 90 8b 46 14 85 c0 75 19 68 99 02 00 00 68 24 invalid operand: CPU:0 EIP:0010:[] Using defaults from ksymoops -t elf32-i386 -a i386 EFLAGS: 00010296 eax: 001c ebx: c1068518 ecx: edx: 0026 esi: c10684fc edi: 021c ebp: 0001 esp: c14f9fa4 ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018 Process bdflush (pid: 5, stackpage=c14f9000) Stack: c01f9865 c01f9a24 0299 c14f8000 c01fb96e 0008e000 0004 0040 0110 c01369c2 0007 00010f00 cff93f84 cff93fd0 0008e000 c0107507 cff93fbc cff93fbc cff93fbc Call Trace: [] [] Code: 0f 0b 83 c4 0c 90 8b 46 14 85 c0 75 19 68 99 02 00 00 68 24 >>EIP; c012c37e<= Trace; c01369c2 Trace; c0107507 Code; c012c37e <_EIP>: Code; c012c37e<= 0: 0f 0b ud2a <= Code; c012c380 2: 83 c4 0c addl $0xc,%esp Code; c012c383 5: 90nop Code; c012c384 6: 8b 46 14 movl 0x14(%esi),%eax Code; c012c387 9: 85 c0 testl %eax,%eax Code; c012c389 b: 75 19 jne26 <_EIP+0x26> c012c3a4 Code; c012c38b d: 68 99 02 00 00pushl $0x299 Code; c012c390 12: 68 24 00 00 00pushl $0x24 This machine has been running flawlessly on 2.2.18 for weeks now, which seems to preclude a hardware issue. And since I've been personally running 2.4.0 on my uniprocessor machine since day one without incident, I suspect some bizarre interaction in SMP-land. But I'm hardly a kernel programmer Unforunately I can't find exact specs on the machine; it's a Dell Precision 420, most likely built with the hardware du jour about six months ago. The config options used are below: CONFIG_X86=y CONFIG_ISA=y CONFIG_UID16=y CONFIG_M686FXSR=y CONFIG_X86_WP_WORKS_OK=y CONFIG_X86_INVLPG=y CONFIG_X86_CMPXCHG=y CONFIG_X86_BSWAP=y CONFIG_X86_POPAD_OK=y CONFIG_X86_L1_CACHE_SHIFT=5 CONFIG_X86_TSC=y CONFIG_X86_GOOD_APIC=y CONFIG_X86_PGE=y CONFIG_X86_USE_PPRO_CHECKSUM=y CONFIG_X86_FXSR=y CONFIG_X86_XMM=y CONFIG_X86_MSR=y CONFIG_X86_CPUID=y CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM=y CONFIG_MTRR=y CONFIG_SMP=y CONFIG_HAVE_DEC_LOCK=y CONFIG_NET=y CONFIG_X86_IO_APIC=y CONFIG_X86_LOCAL_APIC=y CONFIG_PCI=y CONFIG_PCI_GOANY=y CONFIG_PCI_BIOS=y CONFIG_PCI_DIRECT=y CONFIG_PCI_NAMES=y CONFIG_SYSVIPC=y CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT=y CONFIG_SYSCTL=y CONFIG_KCORE_ELF=y CONFIG_BINFMT_AOUT=y CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF=y CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD=y CONFIG_PACKET=y CONFIG_PACKET_MMAP=y CONFIG_NETLINK=y CONFIG_FILTER=y CONFIG_UNIX=y CONFIG_INET=y CONFIG_SYN_COOKIES=y CONFIG_IDE=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDISK=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDECD=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDETAPE=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEPCI=y CONFIG_IDEPCI_SHARE_IRQ=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX=y CONFIG_PIIX_TUNING=y CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_MODES=y CONFIG_NETDEVICES=y CONFIG_NET_ETHERNET=y CONFIG_NET_VENDOR_3COM=y CONFIG_VORTEX=y CONFIG_VT=y CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS=y CONFIG_UNIX98_PTY_COUNT=256 CONFIG_MOUSE=y CONFIG_PSMOUSE=y CONFIG_RTC=y CONFIG_QUOTA=y CONFIG_FAT_FS=y CONFIG_MSDOS_FS=y CONFIG_VFAT_FS=y CONFIG_ISO9660_FS=y CONFIG_JOLIET=y CONFIG_MINIX_FS=y
2.4.0 oops bdflush
We have a development SMP machine which runs a myriad of server applications for our development purposes -- Apache, Oracle, several others. Under 2.4.0 the machine locks up, seemingly at random. Usually it simply stops responding without fanfare -- you can, oddly enough, switch consoles with Alt+F?, but typing gets no response and all network services have stopped responding. However, on the most recent failure I was lucky enough to find that it had managed to spit out a kernel oops message before biting it, which I have (hopefully) decoded (properly): root@fs1:/usr/src/linux.2.4.0# ksymoops -v /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/vmlinux -m \ /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/System.map -o /lib/modules/2.4.0/ ksymoops 2.3.7 on i686 2.2.18. Options used -v /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/vmlinux (specified) -k /proc/ksyms (default) -l /proc/modules (default) -o /lib/modules/2.4.0/ (specified) -m /usr/src/linux.2.4.0/System.map (specified) Error (regular_file): read_ksyms stat /proc/ksyms failed ksymoops: No such file or directory No modules in ksyms, skipping objects No ksyms, skipping lsmod Reading Oops report from the terminal invalid operand: CPU:0 EIP:0010:[c012c37e] EFLAGS: 00010296 eax: 001c ebx: c1068518 ecx: edx: 0026 esi: c10684fc edi: 021c ebp: 0001 esp: c14f9fa4 ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018 Process bdflush (pid: 5, stackpage=c14f9000) Stack: c01f9865 c01f9a24 0299 c14f8000 c01fb96e 0008e000 0004 0040 0110 c01369c2 0007 00010f00 cff93f84 cff93fd0 0008e000 c0107507 cff93fbc cff93fbc cff93fbc Call Trace: [c01369c2] [c0107507] Code: 0f 0b 83 c4 0c 90 8b 46 14 85 c0 75 19 68 99 02 00 00 68 24 invalid operand: CPU:0 EIP:0010:[c012c37e] Using defaults from ksymoops -t elf32-i386 -a i386 EFLAGS: 00010296 eax: 001c ebx: c1068518 ecx: edx: 0026 esi: c10684fc edi: 021c ebp: 0001 esp: c14f9fa4 ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018 Process bdflush (pid: 5, stackpage=c14f9000) Stack: c01f9865 c01f9a24 0299 c14f8000 c01fb96e 0008e000 0004 0040 0110 c01369c2 0007 00010f00 cff93f84 cff93fd0 0008e000 c0107507 cff93fbc cff93fbc cff93fbc Call Trace: [c01369c2] [c0107507] Code: 0f 0b 83 c4 0c 90 8b 46 14 85 c0 75 19 68 99 02 00 00 68 24 EIP; c012c37e page_launder+716/868 = Trace; c01369c2 bdflush+96/dc Trace; c0107507 kernel_thread+23/30 Code; c012c37e page_launder+716/868 _EIP: Code; c012c37e page_launder+716/868 = 0: 0f 0b ud2a = Code; c012c380 page_launder+718/868 2: 83 c4 0c addl $0xc,%esp Code; c012c383 page_launder+71b/868 5: 90nop Code; c012c384 page_launder+71c/868 6: 8b 46 14 movl 0x14(%esi),%eax Code; c012c387 page_launder+71f/868 9: 85 c0 testl %eax,%eax Code; c012c389 page_launder+721/868 b: 75 19 jne26 _EIP+0x26 c012c3a4 page_launder+73c/868 Code; c012c38b page_launder+723/868 d: 68 99 02 00 00pushl $0x299 Code; c012c390 page_launder+728/868 12: 68 24 00 00 00pushl $0x24 This machine has been running flawlessly on 2.2.18 for weeks now, which seems to preclude a hardware issue. And since I've been personally running 2.4.0 on my uniprocessor machine since day one without incident, I suspect some bizarre interaction in SMP-land. But I'm hardly a kernel programmer Unforunately I can't find exact specs on the machine; it's a Dell Precision 420, most likely built with the hardware du jour about six months ago. The config options used are below: CONFIG_X86=y CONFIG_ISA=y CONFIG_UID16=y CONFIG_M686FXSR=y CONFIG_X86_WP_WORKS_OK=y CONFIG_X86_INVLPG=y CONFIG_X86_CMPXCHG=y CONFIG_X86_BSWAP=y CONFIG_X86_POPAD_OK=y CONFIG_X86_L1_CACHE_SHIFT=5 CONFIG_X86_TSC=y CONFIG_X86_GOOD_APIC=y CONFIG_X86_PGE=y CONFIG_X86_USE_PPRO_CHECKSUM=y CONFIG_X86_FXSR=y CONFIG_X86_XMM=y CONFIG_X86_MSR=y CONFIG_X86_CPUID=y CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM=y CONFIG_MTRR=y CONFIG_SMP=y CONFIG_HAVE_DEC_LOCK=y CONFIG_NET=y CONFIG_X86_IO_APIC=y CONFIG_X86_LOCAL_APIC=y CONFIG_PCI=y CONFIG_PCI_GOANY=y CONFIG_PCI_BIOS=y CONFIG_PCI_DIRECT=y CONFIG_PCI_NAMES=y CONFIG_SYSVIPC=y CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT=y CONFIG_SYSCTL=y CONFIG_KCORE_ELF=y CONFIG_BINFMT_AOUT=y CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF=y CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD=y CONFIG_PACKET=y CONFIG_PACKET_MMAP=y CONFIG_NETLINK=y CONFIG_FILTER=y CONFIG_UNIX=y CONFIG_INET=y CONFIG_SYN_COOKIES=y CONFIG_IDE=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDISK=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDECD=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDETAPE=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEPCI=y CONFIG_IDEPCI_SHARE_IRQ=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX=y CONFIG_PIIX_TUNING=y CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_MODES=y CONFIG_NETDEVICES=y CONFIG_NET_ETHERNET=y