Re: kernel BUG at page_alloc.c:98 -- compiling with distcc

[Marco Roeland <marco.roeland@xs4all.nl>]

On Monday April 5th 2004 Marco Fais wrote:

> Ok, let see if we get a patch from this discussion, otherwise I'll file 
> a new bugzilla entry.

Perhaps the fact that you have *two* cards in each machine that crashes
with the 8139too driver could be important? I have two Athlon XP 2000+
with Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ that distcc
quite a lot, and never any crash. But network topology and timings might
just trigger the panic in your situation and not with others...

> [building distcc without sendfile()]
> Great! I'm going to test that right now, surely better than deploying 
> customized kernels in all servers until an "official" patch comes out.

Yeah, although that viewpoint might not be very popular on this mailing
list. ;-) By the way the patch looks quite alright and applies (with
an offset) to 2.6.5 as well. If you build 8139too modular, you might
even make two modules, a modified one with the reduced advertised
capabilities (so that the kernel assumes the card isn't zero-copy
capable) under another name perhaps like 8139too-nosendfile, and the
standard one. You can than at least distribute one kernel package, and
only on the affected machines modprobe the bugfix module.

Anyway, first installing a distcc without sendfile() usages, can make
you (distcc)build patched kernels much faster in the future. ;-)
-- 
Marco Roeland