Re: BUG: soft lockup detected on Phenom with Debian 2.6.24-4

[Laurent GUERBY <laurent@guerby.net>]

On Sun, 2008-03-16 at 15:43 +0100, Laurent GUERBY wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-03-08 at 23:00 +0100, Laurent GUERBY wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I have a system with an "AMD64 Phenom 9500" quad core cpu, 4GB RAM,
> > "ASUS M3A32 MVP Deluxe wifi" motherboard with latest vendor BIOS
> > (0801).
> > 
> > I tried stock debian etch kernel (Debian 2.6.18.dfsg.1-18etch1),
> > machine
> > froze with no message, debian etch backport kernel same, and then
> > Debian 2.6.24-4 from unstable and I got some messages: machine
> > is not frozen but some userland processes are (ps says "Dl" state
> > with child in "Zs" state) and "events/3" is taking 100% cpu
> > according to top:
> > 
> >    18 root      15  -5     0    0    0 R  100  0.0  74:59.46
> > events/3  
> > 
> > Got to the same state with ubuntu hardy 2.6.24-8-server kernel. All
> > kernels are untainted, no X running anyway.
> > 
> > It takes a few hours of doing some stuff, in my case bootstraping or
> > testing GCC at -j 4, and then the problem happens.
> 
> On 2.6.24-1-amd64 (Debian 2.6.24-4) I got a slightly different
> backtrace in /var/log/messages after a few hours of stressing the
> machine with compilations, see below. The given process
> was stuck and unkillable.
> 
> Any idea on what to do/try?

I changed motherboard and went for a (way cheaper but older) ASUS M2A-VM
with is based on the AMD 690G chipset with the exact same
kernel/phenom/memory/disk/box and installed the latest vendor BIOS
(1604). It took longer (25 hours) to get a stuck and unkillable process
but it did happen, but I got nothing in /var/log/kern.log this time.

In order to rule out a motherboard or memory issue I bought an Athlon X2
4400+ EE and put in replacement of the phenom with the exact same
kenel/memory/disk/box and my stress test has been running for 72 hours
without any issue so far.

So in the end it seems to be a problem specific to phenom 9500 with the
linux kernel.

Did anyone succeed in getting a stable linux box based on a phenom 9500
processor ? "Stable" defined as being able to survive a few days
compiling at -j4 (this is for the GCC compile farm after all :).

If so I'm interested by the exact motherboard/bios version/kernel
version/distro used.

As proposed in my first email, ssh root access is possible to my machine
(with either motherboard).

Thanks in advance,

Laurent