Re: Deadlock with linux kernel

Sam Varshavchik (mrsam@courier-mta.com)
Mon, 29 Oct 2001 02:08:55 GMT


Mika Liljeberg writes:

> Hi Jeff,
>
> I have the exact same symptoms on my PII SMP, 440BX chipset machine, and
> I believe it started around version 2.4.6 as you say. Prior to that, my
> machine would reboot randomly without warning. The latest kernel that
> neither reboots nor locks up is 2.4.0-test9. Sometimes it takes two
> hours, sometimes it takes two days, sometimes it takes longer.

A small SMP bug did indeed slip through in 2.4.6 that nails some SMP
hardware dead cold. It should be fixed in the -ac tree know. Have no idea
about the spontaneous reboots you were seeing with the earlier kernels.

> The machine just freezes solid, nothing appears on the console, sysrq
> won't work, leds won't blink, and I suspect the CPUs are spinning (I can
> hear the CPU fans pick up speed, when it happens).

Yup. If you have the right combination of hardware, in 2.4.6+ you could
sometimes end up in an infinite loop while holding a spinlock. I was able
to hit the jackpot with dual P-IIIs on a 440GX with two aic7xxx HBAs.

This wouldn't explain your spontaneous reboots, but try booting with
"noapic".

-- 
Sam 

- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/