Re: 2.1.91pre2 stable?

Bill Broadhurst (bbroad@CX492564-a.dt1.sdca.home.com)
Sun, 29 Mar 1998 08:26:53 -0800

On Thu, Mar 26, 1998 at 03:56:37PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
>
> Ok,
> I just made a real 91 on ftp.kernel.org, let's hope that this has all the
> sillies gone. As usual, it is prefectly smooth on my machine, but this
> time we also have a better chance of it being smooth on machines with less
> memory too, as Rik has done some good work in testing the algorithms out.
>
> So throw some problems at it to see just how good it is..

Much better. But it still has processes randomly die if a _long_ and
fairly CPU intensive process is running. No log entries, no VT
switch, no nothing, if the right process happens to die. If other
processes happen to die, then there's just the dead process. No log
entries, no error messages anywhere, just a D next to the process in
ps. If that process happens to die while accessing a disk, then the
disk is forever busy, and any process accessing it also dies.
Eventually, if left long enough, some critical process will die and the
machine will hang and require a reboot.

What I use to test this is a complete rebuild of the entire X11 suite
which takes over an hour on this machine. I run it on a standard VT
without anything else running (except top but it crashes without top
running) and no X.

If the processes are shorter the system seems fine unless I really
load the machine. I can reproduce the same thing by repeatedly
running kernel builds on 6 VT's at the same time but it takes longer
that way. I just ran 30 consecutive builds on two VT's without any
trouble.

This has been happening since 2.1.88 at least. I don't remember
seeing it before that but I went from around .72 or so right to .88 in
a single jump.

How do I find out what causes this?

This happens on several systems here. Different MB's, different MB
manufacturers, different SCSI cards, different video cards. One system
(not mine) with IDE did it when I was demonstrating the problem to a
friend.

System:
Tyan Tomcat IV with dual P200's.
SCSI only disk system: BT930, 4 disks, CDROM, Tape.
3COM 595 Vortex Net card with cable modem.
ATI Mach64 PCI vid card.

More info on request.

I have a machine here that can be crashed regularly if needed.

-bb

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Dr. Bill Broadhurst                 | Independent contract Engineer.  
  (619)296-3710                       | BIOS, Firmware, & Diagnostics.
  bbroad@CX492564-a.dt1.sdca.home.com | Finger for PGP 5.0 public key. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu