Debian etch on cobalt

Debian etch on cobalt

[Glyn Astill]

Hi Chaps,

I'm trying to get going with debian etch on a cobalt qube2. Unfortunately it dies randomly whilst I try to compile postgres.

I tried subscribing to the debian mipsel ilist with no luck.

I used the following image:
 http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-mipsel/current/images/cobalt/nfsroot.tar.gz

Other than that I've done little else other than apt-get update and apt-get upgrade to use the latest kernel.

When I start compiling postgres 8.3.3 it crashes randomly, if I keep rebooting I can get it compiled, however theres something seriously sh*gged here.

Are there known problems? Is there anything I can do to help, anything I can do to get a kernel core dump? How would I go about getting LKCD going?


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Re: Debian etch on cobalt

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Glyn Astill <glynastill@yahoo.co.uk> [2008-07-25 21:45]:
> I tried subscribing to the debian mipsel ilist with no luck.

There's no debian-mipsel list.  debian-mips is used to discuss both
the mips and mipsel ports.

> When I start compiling postgres 8.3.3 it crashes randomly, if I keep
> rebooting I can get it compiled, however theres something seriously
> sh*gged here.
> 
> Are there known problems?

It's not a known problem.  Do you have a serial console?  Is anything
printed on it when the machine crashes, or is it a hard lockup without
anything on the console?
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

Re: Debian etch on cobalt

[Glyn Astill]

Hi Chaps,

Just a little update on my progress with this, I would post to the debian mips list, but alas I can't seem to sign up. I tried a whole bunch of things but the problem still persisted using etch. As soon as I went down to sarge/oldstable whings were ok.

Heres what I've tried, and all of this made no change to the problem:

- A fresh etch install, only adding ssh, screen and any packages needed to compile stuff.

- Switched out the ram. The machine is using 3.3v ram, I swapped it for 5v as I had no other spare and it's worked fine before.

- Tried another qube, (just swapped the disks)

- Turned of IDE DMA using hdparm

So hardware wize I've tried averything apart from another hard disk (I don't have one spare unfortunately).

Sarge seems okay, however I'd rather run etch. Is there anything else I can check?

Glyn

--- On Sat, 26/7/08, Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> wrote:

> From: Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com>
> Subject: Re: Debian etch on cobalt
> To: "Glyn Astill" <glynastill@yahoo.co.uk>
> Cc: linux-mips@linux-mips.org
> Date: Saturday, 26 July, 2008, 12:46 AM
> * Glyn Astill <glynastill@yahoo.co.uk> [2008-07-25
> 21:45]:
> > I tried subscribing to the debian mipsel ilist with no
> luck.
> 
> There's no debian-mipsel list.  debian-mips is used to
> discuss both
> the mips and mipsel ports.
> 
> > When I start compiling postgres 8.3.3 it crashes
> randomly, if I keep
> > rebooting I can get it compiled, however theres
> something seriously
> > sh*gged here.
> > 
> > Are there known problems?
> 
> It's not a known problem.  Do you have a serial
> console?  Is anything
> printed on it when the machine crashes, or is it a hard
> lockup without
> anything on the console?
> -- 
> Martin Michlmayr
> http://www.cyrius.com/


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Re: Debian etch on cobalt

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Glyn Astill <glynastill@yahoo.co.uk> [2008-08-01 10:49]:
> Sarge seems okay, however I'd rather run etch. Is there anything else I can check?

I'm not sure.

There used to be a hang connected to DMA and high network traffic, but
this should be fixed in the kernel in etch.
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

Re: Debian etch on cobalt

[Glyn Astill]

Just discovered sarge falls over too, however less frequently. So perhaps it's something else, I'm not sure now.

I've switched the drive out, I actually managed to find the original 20gig unit that came with it.

One thing I observed today is free memory getting rather low whilst compiling, it shows about 187Mb total, and I've watched it go as low as 8mb free.  The only other thing I can think of is it's possibly overheating and falling over.


--- On Sun, 3/8/08, Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> wrote:

> From: Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com>
> Subject: Re: Debian etch on cobalt
> To: "Glyn Astill" <glynastill@yahoo.co.uk>
> Cc: linux-mips@linux-mips.org
> Date: Sunday, 3 August, 2008, 7:58 AM
> * Glyn Astill <glynastill@yahoo.co.uk> [2008-08-01
> 10:49]:
> > Sarge seems okay, however I'd rather run etch. Is
> there anything else I can check?
> 
> I'm not sure.
> 
> There used to be a hang connected to DMA and high network
> traffic, but
> this should be fixed in the kernel in etch.
> -- 
> Martin Michlmayr
> http://www.cyrius.com/


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