seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Gwyn Judd]

This has me puzzled. I'm not sure if it is a kernel panic or just X
freezing since it never leaves anything in the logs. Has anyone had this
problem? It seems to happen most often when I am listening to mp3's
although it has happened a few times while it was just sitting there
doing nothing.

Also I am using BootX. Someone mentioned that the kernel is unreliable
with BootX. I have not experienced any problems (barring the one that I
mentioned) with it. What sorts of things are likely to happen? What is
the upgrade process like to go to one of the newer bootloaders?

--
Gwyn Judd (b.judd@xtra.co.nz)
When we talk of tomorrow, the gods laugh.

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Michel Dänzer]

Gwyn Judd wrote:
>
> This has me puzzled. I'm not sure if it is a kernel panic or just X
> freezing since it never leaves anything in the logs.

Pinging from a remote machine can tell for sure as well as the Magic Sysrq
keys.


> Has anyone had this problem?


> It seems to happen most often when I am listening to mp3's although it has
> happened a few times while it was just sitting there doing nothing.

It has also happened to me when the machine was idle. But I've been playing
MP3s extensively without any lockups for some time now.


> Also I am using BootX.

Me yaboot (BootX doesn't work on my Pismo).

What machine do you have?


Michel


--
                        Press every key to continue.
______________________________________________________________________________
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)  \  CS student and free software enthusiast
Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc,i386) user \   member of XFree86, Team *AMIGA*, AUGS

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Gwyn Judd]

On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 03:45:06PM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> Gwyn Judd wrote:
> >
> > This has me puzzled. I'm not sure if it is a kernel panic or just X
> > freezing since it never leaves anything in the logs.
>
> Pinging from a remote machine can tell for sure as well as the Magic Sysrq
> keys.

I (alas) have no remote machine. WHat are the magic sysrq keys on a Mac?

> It has also happened to me when the machine was idle. But I've been playing
> MP3s extensively without any lockups for some time now.
>
>
> > Also I am using BootX.
>
> Me yaboot (BootX doesn't work on my Pismo).
>
> What machine do you have?

PowerMac 266. I am looking into the newer bootloaders. Do you have any
idea what the advantages/disadvantages are?

--
Gwyn Judd (b.judd@xtra.co.nz)
Must be a different Larry Wall.  There are at least 137 of us in the U.S.
             -- Larry Wall in <199809300035.RAA12495@wall.org>

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Magic SysRq key [was Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7]

[phandel]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Gwyn Judd wrote:

> I (alas) have no remote machine. WHat are the magic sysrq keys on a Mac?

The default is 0x69 (F13).  Read more about the Magic Sysrq here:

/usr/src/linux/Documentation/sysrq.txt

You can change the key used.  Use "showkey" to find out the keycode of the
key you'd like to use, and then change the following line:

         ppc_md.SYSRQ_KEY         = 0x69;

...which should be around line 667 of the file
/usr/src/linux-2.2-stable/arch/ppc/kernel/pmac_setup.c

Note, you must enable "Magic SysRq key" under "Kernel hacking" when
compiling your kernel.


Thanks,
Peter

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Gwyn Judd]

On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 08:51:09AM -0500, me@johngrimes.com wrote:
> Gwyn,
> 	Might be related or might not but I have recently started having
> troubles too with random locks.
> 	Now I am running 2.2.15 (but this started happening soon after the
> upgrade)
> 	Now my error is not directly with the kernel though.  If I am in
> the console it has never happened but only if I am in X.  In fact its X
> that crashes but as no keys work it doesn't matter.  Now I always have
> xmms open when I crash but it also might be a screensaver problem as it
> always happens when the screensaver is one (which is the majority of the
> time though).
> 	Does this sound similar?
> 	Do you have an ati rage 128gl card by chance?
> 	John

This all sounds quite familiar. The lockups have happened with both xmms
and mpg123. I have no idea if it is a full system lock or just X since I
have no remote machine to ping it with, all I am able to do is force
reboot. It happened also with 2.2.15 I think as well as 2.2.16

--
Gwyn Judd (b.judd@xtra.co.nz)
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Michel Dänzer]

Gwyn Judd wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 08:51:09AM -0500, me@johngrimes.com wrote:
> > Gwyn,
> >       Might be related or might not but I have recently started having
> > troubles too with random locks.
> >       Now I am running 2.2.15 (but this started happening soon after the
> > upgrade)
> >       Now my error is not directly with the kernel though.  If I am in
> > the console it has never happened but only if I am in X.  In fact its X
> > that crashes but as no keys work it doesn't matter.  Now I always have
> > xmms open when I crash but it also might be a screensaver problem as it
> > always happens when the screensaver is one (which is the majority of the
> > time though).
> >       Does this sound similar?
> >       Do you have an ati rage 128gl card by chance?
> >       John
>
> This all sounds quite familiar. The lockups have happened with both xmms
> and mpg123. I have no idea if it is a full system lock or just X since I
> have no remote machine to ping it with, all I am able to do is force
> reboot. It happened also with 2.2.15 I think as well as 2.2.16

What versions of X are you using? Someone reported lockups with the 4.0 r128
driver a long time ago and someone else suggested it might be bad interaction
between the graphics and sound devices.


Just two more of my cents,

Michel


--
True programmers never die, they just branch to an odd address.
______________________________________________________________________________
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)  \  CS student and free software enthusiast
Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc,i386) user \   member of XFree86, Team *AMIGA*, AUGS

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Gwyn Judd]

On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 04:10:22PM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:

> What versions of X are you using? Someone reported lockups with the 4.0 r128
> driver a long time ago and someone else suggested it might be bad interaction
> between the graphics and sound devices.

[gwyn@thislove:~]$ rpm -q XFree86
XFree86-3.3.6-8a

Looks like no dice there I'm afraid. I upgraded from 3.3.5-something a
week or so ago to see if that would solve it but to no avail.

--
Gwyn Judd (b.judd@xtra.co.nz)
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
		-- Hilaire Belloc

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[me]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN, Size: 1783 bytes --]


Gwyn,
	It does look we might have the same bug.  I'm not using XFree86-4
either I'm also at XFree86-3.3.6-8a.  Did you say you had a rage128gl
card?  Although I do usually have xmms open when I crash I usually am not
playing sound so I don't think thats the problem.
	Where can I get the latest 2.2 series kernel and more importantly,
the latest rage128gl drivers (source off course is fine).  I use some hfs
so I don't really want to try 2.4pre series as yet.
	It also might be time to try Xfree86-4 (although I don't think
this would fix it).  I really want to get multihead to work but I didn't
have any luck with Xfree86-4 in the earlier incarnations to even get one
monitor working.
					John
PS I am using BootX but I don't think that is the problem.


On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Gwyn Judd wrote:

>
> On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 04:10:22PM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
>
> > What versions of X are you using? Someone reported lockups with the 4.0 r128
> > driver a long time ago and someone else suggested it might be bad interaction
> > between the graphics and sound devices.
>
> [gwyn@thislove:~]$ rpm -q XFree86
> XFree86-3.3.6-8a
>
> Looks like no dice there I'm afraid. I upgraded from 3.3.5-something a
> week or so ago to see if that would solve it but to no avail.
>
> --
> Gwyn Judd (b.judd@xtra.co.nz)
> But scientists, who ought to know
> Assure us that it must be so.
> Oh, let us never, never doubt
> What nobody is sure about.
> 		-- Hilaire Belloc
>
>

           John Grimes - Mission Planner for Chandra X-Ray Telescope
Phone 	(H) 617-591-1393	(W) 617-496-7663	(Fax) 617-495-7356
Email 	me@johngrimes.com	Web	http://www.johngrimes.com
Pager	1-800-473-6312 		Alphanumeric  4736312@mobilecomm.net)


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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Michel Dänzer]

me@johngrimes.com wrote:

> It also might be time to try Xfree86-4 (although I don't think this would
> fix it).

I use 4.0x ...


> I really want to get multihead to work but I didn't have any luck with
> Xfree86-4 in the earlier incarnations to even get one monitor working.

At least one head should work well now. You may want to use Jack Howarth's
RPMs.


Michel


--
True programmers never die, they just branch to an odd address.
______________________________________________________________________________
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)  \  CS student and free software enthusiast
Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc,i386) user \   member of XFree86, Team *AMIGA*, AUGS

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Mario Scarpa]

me@johngrimes.com wrote:
>
> Gwyn,
>         It does look we might have the same bug.  I'm not using XFree86-4
> either I'm also at XFree86-3.3.6-8a.  Did you say you had a rage128gl
> card?  Although I do usually have xmms open when I crash I usually am not
> playing sound so I don't think thats the problem.
>         Where can I get the latest 2.2 series kernel and more importantly,
> the latest rage128gl drivers (source off course is fine).  I use some hfs
> so I don't really want to try 2.4pre series as yet.
>         It also might be time to try Xfree86-4 (although I don't think
> this would fix it).  I really want to get multihead to work but I didn't
> have any luck with Xfree86-4 in the earlier incarnations to even get one
> monitor working.
>                                         John
> PS I am using BootX but I don't think that is the problem.


Hi there,

I've got a lombard (400MHz, 64MB) and had precisly the same
behaviour: I was playing some MP3s (mpg123 under X 3.3.6-8
debianPPC) and the system just crashed two times this morning;
coz I tried to ping it from another machine and coz I tried
to shut X down but everything was failing (definitively a system
crash I would say)...
Another brick in the wall...the MP3 I was listening this morning
where both on a CDROM and on a HD and yesterday, just doing a lot
of HD traffic (moving around some huge dirs) I had another lock;
it doesn't happen so often (would say never)...could it be something
related to the IDE driver ? Kernel here 's 2.2.17pre7 rsynced
from linuxcare.

bye,

--
Mario Scarpa

Mondonet NOC
Phone: +39 06 52.47.37.02

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>I've got a lombard (400MHz, 64MB) and had precisly the same
>behaviour: I was playing some MP3s (mpg123 under X 3.3.6-8
>debianPPC) and the system just crashed two times this morning;
>coz I tried to ping it from another machine and coz I tried
>to shut X down but everything was failing (definitively a system
>crash I would say)...
>Another brick in the wall...the MP3 I was listening this morning
>where both on a CDROM and on a HD and yesterday, just doing a lot
>of HD traffic (moving around some huge dirs) I had another lock;
>it doesn't happen so often (would say never)...could it be something
>related to the IDE driver ? Kernel here 's 2.2.17pre7 rsynced
>from linuxcare.

Thinking about it... you may have triggered a threading kernel bug that
was fixed very recently in mmap (and sounds usually uses mmap a lot, X too).

I'll post a new kernel that has this fix today or tomorrow, let's see if
it corrects your problem.

Ben.


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Re: Fixing dead Xservcfers (was Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7)

[Gwyn Judd]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 09:41:36AM -0400, DeRobertis wrote:
> At 2:03 AM +1200 on 7/6/00, Gwyn Judd wrote:
>
> >This all sounds quite familiar. The lockups have happened with both xmms
> >and mpg123. I have no idea if it is a full system lock or just X since I
> >have no remote machine to ping it with, all I am able to do is force
> >reboot.
>
> All you need to do is have your scripts which start as reset the keyboard
> mode to XLATE after the server terminates. A few lines of C code will do
> this; I think there is even a binary to do it, too.
>
> No idea why Linuxppc does not put this in the X start script.

This is not the only problem that can occur. I installed the Xpmac
server the other day and the most annoying thing it did was if it
couldn't start up correctly for some reason (one of them was that I
didn't have the 100dpi fonts installed) then it would immediately quit.
This would cue init (or gdm I'm not sure which) to try to start it
again. and again. This happened about 3 times a second rendering the
system completely unusable. I was not able to change VC's or anything
like that. Fortunately using someone else's suggestion I was able to use
the "Magic Sysrq" key combo to at least reboot the system safely.

--
Gwyn Judd (b.judd@xtra.co.nz)
A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least to the end of the blackboard.

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>This has me puzzled. I'm not sure if it is a kernel panic or just X
>freezing since it never leaves anything in the logs. Has anyone had this
>problem? It seems to happen most often when I am listening to mp3's
>although it has happened a few times while it was just sitting there
>doing nothing.
>
>Also I am using BootX. Someone mentioned that the kernel is unreliable
>with BootX. I have not experienced any problems (barring the one that I
>mentioned) with it. What sorts of things are likely to happen? What is
>the upgrade process like to go to one of the newer bootloaders?

yaboot is only useful if you have a newworld mac.

Did you try killing the X server (ctrl-command-option-backspace) ? Does
it work ?


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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Michel Dänzer]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> Did you try killing the X server (ctrl-command-option-backspace) ? Does
> it work ?

That doesn't work either if the server is locked up...

I also wonder quite much what the Magic Sysrq keys are on Macs (specifically
on the Pismo ;)


Michel


--
Talk is cheap because the supply vastly exceeds the demand.
______________________________________________________________________________
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)  \  CS student and free software enthusiast
Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc,i386) user \   member of XFree86, Team *AMIGA*, AUGS

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Re: seemingly random lock-up with kernel 2.2.17p7

[Iain Sandoe]

Michel Dänzer wrote:
> Gwyn Judd wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 08:51:09AM -0500, me@johngrimes.com wrote:
>> > Gwyn,
>> >       Might be related or might not but I have recently started having
>> > troubles too with random locks.
>> >       Now I am running 2.2.15 (but this started happening soon after the
>> > upgrade)
>> >       Now my error is not directly with the kernel though.  If I am in
>> > the console it has never happened but only if I am in X.  In fact its X
>> > that crashes but as no keys work it doesn't matter.  Now I always have
>> > xmms open when I crash but it also might be a screensaver problem as it
>> > always happens when the screensaver is one (which is the majority of the
>> > time though).
>> >       Does this sound similar?
>> >       Do you have an ati rage 128gl card by chance?
>> >       John
>>
>> This all sounds quite familiar. The lockups have happened with both xmms
>> and mpg123. I have no idea if it is a full system lock or just X since I
>> have no remote machine to ping it with, all I am able to do is force
>> reboot. It happened also with 2.2.15 I think as well as 2.2.16
>
> What versions of X are you using? Someone reported lockups with the 4.0 r128
> driver a long time ago and someone else suggested it might be bad interaction
> between the graphics and sound devices.

There is a little wierditude with sound.  I've seen X grind to a halt on a
300MHz G3 with smaller buffer sizes - which may just be a manifestation of
the more general problem:

Quote from Geert "Richard Zidlicky found a bug that made the driver always
use 1 byte buffers, which gave very bad results on slow machines. It was
fixed in 2.3.x."

I'm on the case of back-porting the 2.3.xx dmasound stuff to 2.2.17pre7 -
but don't hold your breath (there's a lot of understanding to gain on my
part - because the sleep queue stuff changed).

Iain.


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