Re: General Protection faults with 1.3.85-8] kernels

William M. Perkins (bill@grnwood.grnwood.richmond.us.net)
Sun, 14 Apr 1996 21:19:04 -0400 (EDT)

> When my system boots with any of the latest kernels, 1.3.85 to 1.3.88,
> everything goes okey until the X-Window server starts. The server,
> /usr/bin/X11/X -> XF86_S3, and xdm get started, but after logging in with
> any usercode, the default xterm app never appears. No copies of xterm can be
> started and only xclock and the screensaver can be run. Instead I get the
> following General Protection Fault message, in this case with the 1.3.88
> kernel:
>
> > general protection: f000
> > CPU: 0
> > EIP: 0010:[<00000005>]
> > EFLAGS: 00010202
> > eax: 00000018 ebx: 01fd9564 ecx: 00000000 edx: 01ac9384
> > esi: 01ac9bf4 edi: 00000000 ebp: 0000000e esp: 018e9f64
> > ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 0018 gs: 002b ss: 0018
> > Process color_xterm (pid: 345, process nr: 38, stackpage=018e9000)
> > Stack: 0282337f 01fd9564 01ac9bf4 018e9f84 00000020 0282c7d0 fffffff8 00000003
> > 00000000 00000000 013c0810 08058e80 bffffa1c 0117c000 0012ae61 0001aaea
> > 0012aeaa 00000003 013c0810 08058e80 bffffa1c 0010a489 0001aaea 08058e80
> > Call Trace: [<0282337f>] [<0282c7d0>] [<0012ae61>] [<0012aeaa>] [<0010a489>]
> > Code: ea 00 f0 c3 e2 00 f0 97 ea 00 f0 97 ea 00 f0 54 ff 00 f0 43
>
> I do not get these general protection messages for 1.3.84 and previous versions of
> the 1.3 kernel.
>
> Bill
>
> PS: This system is a 486DX2-66MHz PCI with 32 MB of memory, a ncr53c810, Sound
> Blaster 16, and 3com 3c503 lan card.

Grrrrrr....

Well, I got the problem figured out finally! I get the General Protection faults
with any a.out (ZMAGIC) program I try to run with the 1.3.8[5-8] kernels! This
happens even though I compile these kernels with CONFIG_BINFMT_AOUT=y. I had to
compile the 1.3.8[5-8] kernels with CONFIG_BINFMT_AOUT=m to get a module and load
it as part of the boot process. I also have CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF=y since most of the
programs on my system are ELF.

Why did this behavior have to change? I like to compile my kernels with only the
options I need without resorting to something like loadable modules. I am not
saying that loadable module aren't useful, but I have felt I needed to use them.
The last kernel to work properly for me on this issue was 1.3.84.

Bill 

-- 
William M. Perkins                       Internet - wperkins@us.net
The Greenwood                               or    - bill@cais.com
Commodore is dead.  Long lives the Amiga!  (AmigaOS/Linux/NetBSD)