Linux 2.4.18 occassionally freezes

Linux 2.4.18 occassionally freezes

[Urte Fürst]

Hi list,

I'm experiencing strange system freezes occurring occassionally. I have
> 20 machines (all DELL Precision 530 workstations) running RedHat 7.1
plus an updated 2.4.18 kernel (latest stable AFAIK). There are slight
differences in additional hardware: some of the machines have an
internal
CD burner. With those machines (containing an internal CDRW device) and
especially when vmware is installed and used as well, I see the system
freezing every now and then. I have difficulties figuring out the cause,
as there are no messages in the system log which seem to point me in the
right direction. I never had this behaviour so far with a
non-CDRW-system.
The freeze sometimes happens two or thress times within one week,
afterwards
the machine is just happily working for the next whole month.

What would be good way to catch and eliminate the problem? Should I try
so run a kernel with debugging enabled? Or does anyone have similar
problems
and maybe some hints how to cope with it?

Many thanx in advance for any help!
Kind regards,
Urte

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All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?

Re: Linux 2.4.18 occassionally freezes

[Paul Furness]

Apart from the kernel, have you updated all the other packages on the
systems? It's not just the kernel that needs to be updated; pretty much
everything gets updated over the course of a year or more. It seems more
likely to be the apps than the kernel; 2.4.18 is indeed the latest
stable, but which Red Hat version do you have? 2.4.18-10 is, I think,
the latest patch, but RH8.0 uses 2.4.18-14.
Also check your VMWare version - 3.2 is the latest.
  

I remember having many problems with RH7.1's stability, but when I moved
to 7.2 it fixed many of them (although others were introduced.) Applying
all the updates to 7.2 made it very much better. 7.3 seems pretty good
too. I'm currently trying out 8 on my workstation, but I had a number of
little problems with it because a number of key things work differently
in 8. 

You could experiment with upgrading one of the machines that's showing
problems to a later version of RedHat (I wouldn't go for 8 yet as it's
very new and although it seems really good, there may still be hidden
bugs).

Upgrading to 7.2 or even 7.3 should have very little impact on every day
usage because the changes are mostly bug-fixes etc, so even if you have
one machine at 7.3 and the rest at 7.1, it shouldn't generate too many
problems.

Paul.

On Thu, 2002-10-10 at 12:20, Urte Fürst wrote:
> 
> Hi list,
> 
> I'm experiencing strange system freezes occurring occassionally. I have
> > 20 machines (all DELL Precision 530 workstations) running RedHat 7.1
> plus an updated 2.4.18 kernel (latest stable AFAIK). There are slight
> differences in additional hardware: some of the machines have an
> internal
> CD burner. With those machines (containing an internal CDRW device) and
> especially when vmware is installed and used as well, I see the system
> freezing every now and then. I have difficulties figuring out the cause,
> as there are no messages in the system log which seem to point me in the
> right direction. I never had this behaviour so far with a
> non-CDRW-system.
> The freeze sometimes happens two or thress times within one week,
> afterwards
> the machine is just happily working for the next whole month.
> 
> What would be good way to catch and eliminate the problem? Should I try
> so run a kernel with debugging enabled? Or does anyone have similar
> problems
> and maybe some hints how to cope with it?
> 
> Many thanx in advance for any help!
> Kind regards,
> Urte
> 
> -- 
>                                                        \|/
>                                                        @ @
> ---------------------------------------------------oOO-(_)-OOo-------------
> 
> All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
> -
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> 
-- 
Paul Furness

Systems Manager

2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.

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Re: Linux 2.4.18 occassionally freezes

[Kyle]

  I ran into a problem with a SCSI CDRW running on an
Adaptec 2920 (I think) scsi card.  The problem wasn't
with the cdrw it was with the drivers that supported
the scsi card.  The card wasn't made by adaptec and
was using a future domain chipset.  The fdomain driver
hung my system everytime I tried to use the CDRW in
write mode, and sometimes in read mode.  I looked for
fixes but wasn't able to find any.  Other's I talked
to had the same problem.
   Don't know if that applies to your situation or
not... 

Kyle.
--- Urte Fürst <Urte.Fuerst@dlr.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi list,
> 
> I'm experiencing strange system freezes occurring
> occassionally. I have
> > 20 machines (all DELL Precision 530 workstations)
> running RedHat 7.1
> plus an updated 2.4.18 kernel (latest stable AFAIK).
> There are slight
> differences in additional hardware: some of the
> machines have an
> internal
> CD burner. With those machines (containing an
> internal CDRW device) and
> especially when vmware is installed and used as
> well, I see the system
> freezing every now and then. I have difficulties
> figuring out the cause,
> as there are no messages in the system log which
> seem to point me in the
> right direction. I never had this behaviour so far
> with a
> non-CDRW-system.
> The freeze sometimes happens two or thress times
> within one week,
> afterwards
> the machine is just happily working for the next
> whole month.
> 
> What would be good way to catch and eliminate the
> problem? Should I try
> so run a kernel with debugging enabled? Or does
> anyone have similar
> problems
> and maybe some hints how to cope with it?
> 
> Many thanx in advance for any help!
> Kind regards,
> Urte
> 
> -- 
>                                                     
>   \|/
>                                                     
>   @ @
>
---------------------------------------------------oOO-(_)-OOo-------------
> 
> All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line
> "unsubscribe linux-admin" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at 
http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html


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Re: Linux 2.4.18 occassionally freezes

[Urte Fürst]

Hi Paul,

> Apart from the kernel, have you updated all the other packages on the
> systems?
I currently do security updates, but I did not upgrade all packages on
the system. I already thought about trying RedHat 7.2 or 7.3 to see if
the problem still exists. The current system is RedHat 7.1. Generally
I don't have a problem with stability in 7.1 except when running in this
configuration with CDRW and vmware usage.

> Also check your VMWare version - 3.2 is the latest.
It is VMware-3.0. May be an update might be a good idea here as well.

> You could experiment with upgrading one of the machines that's showing
> problems to a later version of RedHat (I wouldn't go for 8 yet as it's
> very new and although it seems really good, there may still be hidden
> bugs).
Trying 8 would be a step too far, I agree.

Thanks for your ideas,
kind regards,
Urte
-- 
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All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?

Re: Linux 2.4.18 occassionally freezes

[Urte Fürst]

Hi Kyle,

>   I ran into a problem with a SCSI CDRW running on an
> Adaptec 2920 (I think) scsi card.  (...)
My CDRW is an IDE device, so the scsi driver can't be fooled
here... I don't have explicit problems when accessing the cdrw
drive while vmware is running or something like that unfortunately.
This would at least give an idea of what might be going on. The
system freeze I see happens just once in a while in different
situations. Sometimes the system just hangs while being unattended
and the user comes back and calls me if I did something with the
machine. :-) Another time starting vmware (without even booting the
Guest OS) causes the hang. Sometimes it happens during night when
some calculations running (and sure nobody accesses the cdrw). I'm
even not sure if it has anything to do with the cdrw. It's just a
raw guess that it might be related.

One of the problem is that I didn't find other people with the
same problem so far.

Urte

-- 
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All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?