PROBLEM: 2.6.18.2 kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:606!

PROBLEM: 2.6.18.2 kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:606!

[Paul Seelig]

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Hi all,

second try via the public list since my first post was rejected due to
containing much more than 100.000 characters...

Almost daily, my IBM ThinkPad T23 (Modell 2647-9RG) with 1GB of RAM and
normally running the latest of Debian/unstable is getting an Oops
displaying "kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:606!" in the syslog. This happened
both with 2.6.18.1 and now 2.6.18.2 various times. Simply going back to
2.6.17.11 or even former kernel versions usually resumes rock stable
operation, but this is no resolution for the bug in 2.6.18.*. Two times
i experienced the machine to simply stop responding after/while over
night without using it. The last two times this had happened, i was
doing an "apt-get dist-upgrade" for Debian/unstable and the oops
happened in the middle of package installation.

The kernel was compiled using Manoj Srivasta's kernelpackage, using the
command line 'MAKEFLAGS="CC=gcc-3.4" make-kpkg kernel_image' to create a
Debian kernel package with gcc-3.4.6 for compilation.

I followed the instructions at www.tux.org/lkml/reporting-bugs.html as
closely as i could and have attached the requested information in
separate files attached in Oops.tgz. I'm not subscribed to the list and
would therefore
appreciate CC'ing for possible followups, but try to follow it via
www.lkml.org nonetheless. I would be delighted to further provide
any information and further debugging in resolving the issue at hand.

Thanks for Linux and all

P. *8^)

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Re: PROBLEM: 2.6.18.2 kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:606!

[Paolo Ornati]

On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:10:12 +0100
Paul Seelig <pseelig@debian.org> wrote:

> Almost daily, my IBM ThinkPad T23 (Modell 2647-9RG) with 1GB of RAM and
> normally running the latest of Debian/unstable is getting an Oops
> displaying "kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:606!" in the syslog. This happened
> both with 2.6.18.1 and now 2.6.18.2 various times.

1) you don't have to run ksymoops with 2.6.x kernels (only with <=2.4.x)


2) your kernel is tainted:
ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.

http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-18


3) your kernel is also patched (Suspend2 isn't in vanilla kernels)

Suspend2 Core.
Suspend2 Compression Driver loading.
Suspend2 Encryption Driver loading.


So I suggest you to reproduce the problem with a vanilla/not tainted
2.6.18.2:

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.18.2.tar.bz2

-- 
	Paolo Ornati
	Linux 2.6.19-rc5 on x86_64

Re: PROBLEM: 2.6.18.2 kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:606!

[Paul Seelig]

On Sun, Nov 12, 2006 at 09:00:17PM +0100, Paolo Ornati wrote:
> 3) your kernel is also patched (Suspend2 isn't in vanilla kernels)
> 
> Suspend2 Core.
> Suspend2 Compression Driver loading.
> Suspend2 Encryption Driver loading.
> 
> So I suggest you to reproduce the problem with a vanilla/not tainted
> 2.6.18.2:
>
Thanks for pointing this out! I've been running a selfcompiled vanilla
kernel for the last three days without any of the reported problems
reappearing! :-)

As it looks like, the culprit seemed to be the suspend2 patch. I was not
aware of newer suspend2 patches for 2.6.18.2 and kept using the ones for
2.6.18 instead, which have applied perfectly.

Today i fetched the newest suspend2 patches and rebooted the machine with a
2.6.18.2 kernel containing them. Now let's see if the problem i reported
persists. If yes, i'll report them to Nigel Cunningham instead.

Thanks for the help!

Re: PROBLEM: 2.6.18.2 kernel BUG at mm/vmscan.c:606!

[Paolo Ornati]

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:43:30 +0100
Paul Seelig <pseelig@debian.org> wrote:

> Today i fetched the newest suspend2 patches and rebooted the machine with a
> 2.6.18.2 kernel containing them. Now let's see if the problem i reported
> persists. If yes, i'll report them to Nigel Cunningham instead.

You can also do suspend without external patches... for example with

	http://suspend.sourceforge.net/

it's also packaged by Debian:

	http://packages.debian.org/testing/admin/uswsusp

:)

-- 
	Paolo Ornati
	Linux 2.6.19-rc4-g2de6c39f on x86_64