Re: Signal 11

Mark Vojkovich
2000-12-08T20:05:55Z

On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, David Woodhouse wrote:

>
> ak@suse.de said:
> > Sounds like a X Server bug. You should probably contact XFree86, not
> > linux-kernel
>
> I quote from the X devel list, which perhaps I shouldn't do but this is hardly
> NDA'd stuff:
>
> On Mon 20 Nov 2000, mvojkovich@valinux.com said:
> > I have seen random crashes on dual P3 BX boards (Tyan) and dual Xeon
> > GX boards (Intel). XFree86 core dumps indicate that it happens in
> > random places, in old as dirt software rendering code that has nothing
> > wrong with it. I've only seen this under 2.3.x/2.4 SMP kernels. I
> > would say that this is definitely a kernel problem.
>
> XFree86 3.9 and XFree86 4 were rock solid for a _long_ time on 2.[34]
> kernels - even on my BP6¹. The random crashes started to happen when I
> upgraded my distribution² - and are only seen by people using 2.4. So I
> suspect that it's the combination of glibc and kernel which is triggering
> it.

Some additional data points. It goes away on UP 2.4 kernels.
Also, I can't recall seeing this problem on IA64. Maybe it's still
there on IA64 and I just haven't been trying hard enough to crash
it, but my current impression is that the problem doesn't exist on IA64.

Hmmm... IA64 is a static server. I don't hear of people having
problems on 3.3.6 servers either. I'm wondering if a non-loader
4.0 server would have problems on IA32 with a 2.4 kernel. That's
something for people to try.

Mark.

>
> --
> dwmw2
>
> ¹ And the BP6 still falls over less frequently than the dual P3 I use at
> work.
> ² RH7. Don't start.