From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <3C00772F.783F8720@netfall.com> Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 20:44:31 -0800 From: Andrew Sharp MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org, debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: Kernel crashing problems on oldworld References: <20011123032512.C387@Obsession> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: Chris Tillman wrote: > > I have a PowerBase 180 oldworld powerpc with Debian woody > (2.2.19-pmac). I started having a crashing problem about 4 weeks ago, > the easiest way to repeat it was to use nano (1.0.5/1.0.6) to edit a > document, and select the Search function or the save-file function. In > either case, the computer would freeze as it was attempting to update > the help keys across the bottom of the screen. This never occurred in > nano-tiny, which is a reduced-library version. > > There is no kernel message with this crash, it simply freezes the > machine. I tried strace, its log gets cut off shortly after the > keystroke which causes the crash, so it's not much help. > > I traced the execution of the code from nano into the ncurses library, > and determined that it was crashing right after a call to > _nc_flush(). Here is an example backtrace just prior to a crash: > > in doupdate() at ../ncurses/tty/tty_update.c:787 _nc_flush(); > called by wrefresh() at ../ncurses/base/lib-refresh.c:60 > called by bottombars() at ../nano/winio.c:562 > called by display_main_list() at ../nano/winio.c:1152 > called by search_abort() at search.c:298 > > The maintainer says that _nc_flush() simply calls fflush. Of course, > that function is called many times in this and other programs -- it is > only these special circumstances in which it causes a crash. > > This problem doesn't occur on my newworld powerpc, but it is > reliably repeatable on my oldworld. I also got serveral crashes in > dselect which uses the same ncurses library. > > I verified that the same thing happens if I install on a different > partition, even a different disk. It did *not* repeat on another > oldworld computer (PowerCenter 150) with the same woody installation > (it's on an external SCSI disk, I just moved the disk to the new > machine) - so I concluded it was some conflict with my ATY Mach64 card > (which according to lspci, is an ATI 3D Rage I/II 215GT [Mach64GT] > (rev 41). I tried adding video=atyfb to the kernel arguments, that did > not affect it. > > I constructed a patch which prevents the crash; not sure if it would > be much help in determining the true cause though. The patch just uses > wredrawln to claim that the 2 help lines are corrupt and asks for them > to be completely redrawn rather than just refreshed. > > Another interesting point is that I can run all the ncurses test > programs except worm, which crashes in a few seconds, but only when > the console it's running on is actually visible. And, the blink and > underline attributes don't seem to work on my system. > > Finally, I downloaded the kernel-image-2.4.12-powerpc package to see > if changing the kernel would make a difference. It did, the nano crash > disappeared. The worm crash is still present, though. > > I can continue trying to trace the problem in worm, if there's > interest, since it's present in both kernels. Or if there's interest > in the kernel 2.2.19 nano problem, whatever... I am interested in > helping track down the problem because it's such a hard crash. My > filesystem is of course damaged when I have to hard reboot. > > I signed up to the list. Let me know what I can try. And Happy > Thanksgiving! Thanks. Are you sure it's not just some memory that's gone bad rather than a conflict with the video card? a ** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/