We are currently running 2.2.7 on these machines, but I see from
searching linux-kernel traffic that the problem of kernel oops in
shrink_mmap is a long-standing one which has been reported in many
different kernel versions, up to at least 2.2.12, and has also been
reported in Linux/Alpha. I've looked at all of the past archives, and I
didn't see any definitive response to these problems.
The problem is probably related to heavy disk use and/or heavy network
traffic and/or heavy parallel processing with threads. These are the
circumstances under which we tend to see the problem, and also are
circumstances that I see correlated with past reports of this problem.
I have 56 of these oops messages from 10 different machines, all at
exactly the same location. I've attached a sample at the end of this
note. Most of them look very similar (to each other, and to other oops
messages previously posted to this list). But I would be happy to
forward all of them to anyone who can use them. I could collect even
more if that would be helpful.
It's possible that the problem is associated with or caused by a
hardware problem. Out of thousands of machines, we could easily have 10
with some specific problem. But I don't really know what kind of a
problem, or why it would manifest itself only in this particular way.
Also, the fact that the same problem occurs in Linux/Alpha makes me
suspect some sort of software flaw.
We would greatly appreciate any constructive suggestions or help with
this problem. I would be glad to send a Google T-shirt to anyone who
can help.
-- David desJardins
*** Linux s17 2.2.7 #6 Mon May 10 16:58:52 PDT 1999 i686 unknown
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 40000014
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: current->tss.cr3 = 00101000, %cr3 = 00101000
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: *pde = 00000000
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: Oops: 0000
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: CPU: 0
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: EIP: 0010:[try_to_free_buffers+18/136]
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: EFLAGS: 00010202
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: eax: 40000000 ebx: c029b320 ecx: 00000006 edx: 00020000
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: esi: 40000000 edi: 40000000 ebp: c029b320 esp: c000dfa8
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: Process kswapd (pid: 4, process nr: 4, stackpage=c000d000)
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: Stack: 00000030 c000c000 c011b386 c029b320 00000020 00000006 c01200eb 00000006
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: 00000030 00000000 c01a1eee c000c1c1 c0120197 00000030 00000f00 c0003fb4
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: c0106000 00009000 c01073eb 00000000 00000f00 c01cdfd8
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: Call Trace: [shrink_mmap+218/300] [do_try_to_free_pages+35/120] [tvecs+5218/20156] [kswapd+87/200] [get_options+0/116] [kernel_thread+35/48]
Nov 15 15:50:42 s17 kernel: Code: 8b 76 14 83 78 20 00 75 06 f6 40 18 46 74 13 6a 00 e8 4c 01
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