Re: OS Fails to Load

Herbert Poetzl (herbert@13thfloor.at)
Tue, 24 Jun 2003 05:05:42 +0200


Hi Brad!

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 04:11:06PM -0400, Brad Tilley wrote:
> Hello,
>
> 50% of the time when I boot RH Linux 9 (2.4.20-18.9) the OS fails to load. The
> failure usually occurs during a period of intense disk activity such as
> 'finding module dependencies' or 'mounting local filesystems'. I can reproduce
> this error with the most recent RH kernel and the kernel that the distro
> originally shipped with and 2.4.21 from Kernel.org built using RH's config
> files. Usually after 4-5 power cycles, the OS loads OK and the machine runs
> fine once it gets going.

I've seen this happen on MDK 8.2 and MDK 9.1 with or
without custom kernel from 2.4.19 - 2.4.20 ...

it seemed to me to be VM related (swapper) but I had no
time to take a closer look at it ...

you will find many voodoo answers on the net, how this
was cured (like disable usb, change hd, etc ...) but I
guess this is some kind of VM deadlock, which can be
triggered by any memory consuming task activated before
swap is enabled ...

> It's a HP xw4100 with these specs:
>
> P4 Processor 3.00GHz/800 FSB
> 1.5GB DDR/400 ECC (2x512, 2x256)
> NVIDIA Quadro4 200NVS 64MB AGP
> Ultra320 SCSI Controller
> 18GB Ultra 320 SCSI 15,000rpm Hard Drive (sda)
> 146GB Ultra 320 SCSI 10,000rpm Hard Drive (sdb)
> 48X DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
> 48X CD-RW Drive
> Broadcom Gbit 10/100/1000
>
> Can someone help me troubleshoot this? I'm at the end of my rope. I have the
> most recent BIOS from HP.

maybe this has been fixed in 2.4.21-rc6 ...

Summary of changes from v2.4.21-rc5 to v2.4.21-rc6
============================================
Andrew Morton <akpm@digeo.com>:
o Fix IO stalls and deadlocks

if not, you could try to activate magic sys-req and
dump the current kernel state, or even better, attach
the debugger and have a look whats going on ...

HTH,
Herbert

> Thanks,
> Brad
>
>
>
>
> -
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