Re: The stability crisis

George (greerga@nidhogg.ham.muohio.edu)
Thu, 1 Jul 1999 19:52:14 -0400 (EDT)


On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Matthew Vanecek wrote:

>That's pretty much been my experience. 2.2.10 crashes on a regular
>basis. Certainly more than previous kernels. Why? Who's to say? It
>leaves behind no information. Nothing in the logs, nothing in dmesg
>(which changes with each boot up, anyhow). There's no way to try the
>magic SysRq key, as the keyboard is completely locked up. I can't
>telnet/ssh/ftp/ping the box, as it evidently stops processing all
>network requests. In short, there is absolutely no indication, not the
>slightest oops or byte left over, to even begin to give the inkling of a
>clue about why the system crashed. So how do you debug that? I don't
>even know how to cause the crash; usually i get up in the morning, or
>come home from work, to find the machine all locked up.

Get the IKD (Integrated Kernel Debugger) patch. It located the 'stuck on
TLB IPI wait' bug for me on the first shot. I had to copy down both oops
(SMP) by hand though. Graph paper is handy for locating errors in copying.

-George Greer

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