linux 2.4.32: kernel BUG in slab.c:1582

From: Sebastian Kuzminsky
Date: Wed Dec 20 2006 - 14:27:30 EST


Hi folks, I've got an old PC (Pentium 133 MHz, 64 MB RAM, no swap)
running Linux 2.4.32, and lately I've been getting kernel BUGs like this:

kernel: kernel BUG at slab.c:1582!
kernel: invalid operand: 0000
kernel: CPU: 0
kernel: EIP: 0010:[kmem_cache_free+105/624] Not tainted
kernel: EFLAGS: 00010293
kernel: eax: c10b7354 ebx: 00003ef0 ecx: 0002b450 edx: c100001c
kernel: esi: 000ad140 edi: c3ef0634 ebp: 00000023 esp: c10c3f4c
kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
kernel: Process kswapd (pid: 4, stackpage=c10c3000)
kernel: Stack: c10b7354 c2c13e3c c3ef0634 c036dd3c 00000023 c01426ca c10b7354 c3ef0634
kernel: 0000003c 000001d0 00000009 c0232f18 c01429b5 00000379 c012a7b8 00000006
kernel: 000001d0 00000000 00000000 c0232f18 00000001 c10c2000 00000000 c012a947
kernel: Call Trace: [prune_dcache+266/320] [shrink_dcache_memory+37/64] [try_to_free_pages_zone+104/208] [kswapd_balance_pgdat+87/160] [kswapd_balance+22/48]
kernel: [kswapd+143/176] [_stext+0/48] [arch_kernel_thread+35/48] [kswapd+0/176]
kernel:
kernel: Code: 0f 0b 2e 06 7a c0 20 c0 9c 8f 04 24 fa 3b 1d 20 82 28 c0 89


The system is a bit tight on memory, but /proc/meminfo reports MemFree +
Buffers + Cached > 10 MB.

After kswapd stepped on the BUG, it happened several more times by
different processes and different code paths, but always ending with this:

Call Trace: [prune_dcache+266/320] [shrink_dcache_memory+37/64] [try_to_free_pages_zone+104/208] [balance_classzone+76/560] [__alloc_pages+363/624]


The BUG is this one:

/**
* kmem_cache_free - Deallocate an object
* @cachep: The cache the allocation was from.
* @objp: The previously allocated object.
*
* Free an object which was previously allocated from this
* cache.
*/
void kmem_cache_free (kmem_cache_t *cachep, void *objp)
{
unsigned long flags;
#if DEBUG
CHECK_PAGE(virt_to_page(objp));
if (cachep != GET_PAGE_CACHE(virt_to_page(objp)))
BUG();
#endif

local_irq_save(flags);
__kmem_cache_free(cachep, objp);
local_irq_restore(flags);
}


So prune_dcache() gets called to free up some memory, but then it hands
kmem_cache_free an inconsistent object to free? Is this indicative of
memory corruption?


--
Sebastian Kuzminsky There are two kinds of people in this world:
Those who finish what they begin.
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