Any stable 2.4 kernel?

Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Igor Mozetic]

I wonder if anybody has found a stable kernel for the following
hardware: C440GX+, dual Xeon 550, 2GB RAM, 1GB swap, aic7xxx.
Usage pattern is load > 2, highmem, not much I/O (maybe swap?).
Some of our jobs take weeks, so stable means months between reboots.

I found anything beyond 2.4.10 useless - lockups after a few days.
Currently I run 2.4.3 with varying degree of success - initial lifespan
was 4 months, but last reincarnation survived for 3 weeks only.

Any recommendation for 2.4 or should I consider going back to 2.2 ?
I don't need any fancy features (apart to SMP and highmem),
only stability is important.

-Igor Mozetic

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Rik van Riel]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Igor Mozetic wrote:

> I wonder if anybody has found a stable kernel for the following
> hardware: C440GX+,

> Any recommendation for 2.4

My recommendation would be to ask Intel to release the
documentation for the 440GX so the people writing the
Linux kernel have a chance of working around the bugs.

Alternatively, get hardware for which documentation is
available.

regards,

Rik
-- 
DMCA, SSSCA, W3C?  Who cares?  http://thefreeworld.net/

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Dan Hollis]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Igor Mozetic wrote:
> > I wonder if anybody has found a stable kernel for the following
> > hardware: C440GX+,
> > Any recommendation for 2.4
> My recommendation would be to ask Intel to release the
> documentation for the 440GX so the people writing the
> Linux kernel have a chance of working around the bugs.
> Alternatively, get hardware for which documentation is
> available.

http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/440gx/

???

-Dan
-- 
[-] Omae no subete no kichi wa ore no mono da. [-]

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Jeff Garzik]

Rik van Riel wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Igor Mozetic wrote:
> 
> > I wonder if anybody has found a stable kernel for the following
> > hardware: C440GX+,
> 
> > Any recommendation for 2.4
> 
> My recommendation would be to ask Intel to release the
> documentation for the 440GX so the people writing the
> Linux kernel have a chance of working around the bugs.

And while you're at it ask for Intel SpeedStep docs, too...

-- 
Jeff Garzik      | Only so many songs can be sung
Building 1024    | with two lips, two lungs, and one tongue.
MandrakeSoft     |         - nomeansno

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Eric W. Biederman]

Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com> writes:


> And while you're at it ask for Intel SpeedStep docs, too...

SpeedStep isn't totally undocumented.  The IO Controller Hub 2
documentation has documentation on how to switch the processor into
speed step mode.  

And I believe the Pentium 4 version is documented.

I haven't looked in detail at this point, so it may be only partially
documented. 

Eric

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Igor Mozetic]

 > Alternatively, get hardware for which documentation is
 > available.

Good point. So, which (SMP, highmem) hardware is well documented 
and supported? LPD/Hardware-HOWTO/motherboards is pretty empty ...

-Igor Mozetic

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Eric W. Biederman]

Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br> writes:

> On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Igor Mozetic wrote:
> 
> > I wonder if anybody has found a stable kernel for the following
> > hardware: C440GX+,
> 
> > Any recommendation for 2.4
> 
> My recommendation would be to ask Intel to release the
> documentation for the 440GX so the people writing the
> Linux kernel have a chance of working around the bugs.

???  The 440GX is documented.  What documentation is missing?

> 
> Alternatively, get hardware for which documentation is
> available.

???

Eric

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Alan Cox]

> My recommendation would be to ask Intel to release the
> documentation for the 440GX so the people writing the
> Linux kernel have a chance of working around the bugs.
> 
> Alternatively, get hardware for which documentation is
> available.

The 440GX problems we've seen have been incorrect IRQ routing and related
problems that generally screw you right from boot up. In that sense the
440GX boards are sometimes "winputers" rather than PC compatibles.

It doesn't fit the random crash report

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Rik van Riel]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Alan Cox wrote:

> The 440GX problems we've seen have been incorrect IRQ routing and related
> problems that generally screw you right from boot up. In that sense the
> 440GX boards are sometimes "winputers" rather than PC compatibles.
>
> It doesn't fit the random crash report

Urghhh, should learn not to respond to stuff I haven't
had the time to research ;)

Rik
-- 
DMCA, SSSCA, W3C?  Who cares?  http://thefreeworld.net/

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Igor Mozetic]

Mike,

 > (I'm still running 2.4.3 in this box's 'vital functions' environment)

Nice to hear this - what are your uptimes for 2.4.3 and load?
Do you have similar hardware? I have a feeling that highmem
(2GB ram) is the most critical part kernel-wise since the
rest of our machines ('normal', 128-768MB ram) was very solid
under 2.4.3 and 2.4.9 kernels (but they are not so loaded).

Regards,
        Igor

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Tom Sightler]

> I wonder if anybody has found a stable kernel for the following
> hardware: C440GX+, dual Xeon 550, 2GB RAM, 1GB swap, aic7xxx.
> Usage pattern is load > 2, highmem, not much I/O (maybe swap?).
> Some of our jobs take weeks, so stable means months between reboots.

> I found anything beyond 2.4.10 useless - lockups after a few days.
> Currently I run 2.4.3 with varying degree of success - initial lifespan
> was 4 months, but last reincarnation survived for 3 weeks only.

I'll offer a few suggestions.

What particular distribution are you using?  If using a commercial
distribution like SuSE or Redhat have you tried the kernels that they
provide.  I've generally found these kernels to be very stable as both of
these vendors perform fairly rigorous testing before making a kernel release
to the public.

The next suggestion would be to actually attempt to determine the reason for
the crash and see if it can be fixed.  I would generally agree that your
problem is probably with highmem, and since 2.4.10 was when Andrea's VM went
in (i think) maybe that's why kernels after that point are worse for you.
Perhaps try a recent -ac kernel and see what they act like.

> Any recommendation for 2.4 or should I consider going back to 2.2 ?
> I don't need any fancy features (apart to SMP and highmem),
> only stability is important.

Well, I still run 2.2 on all the machines that need 100% reliability, and
while I also have several 2.4.x machines that have achieved 200+ day
uptimes, they are all single processor <512MB RAM machines.  The 2.2 servers
are all dual or quad processor with  >2GB RAM and all seven achived 150+ day
uptimes, although I'll finally have to reboot them all soon to apply the
recent SuSE kernel updates for the recent security exploits (even though I'm
fairly low risk for them I thought it was a good excuse to schedule
maintanence).  I'm currently testing one of the machines with the 2.4.7
kernel from SuSE, but I'm still not ready to make the jump on the really
loaded machines.

Later,
Tom

Re: Any stable 2.4 kernel?

[Steve.Batson]

I've also had some problems finding a stable 2.4 kernel.

I admin' a few machines, one of which is a DELL Poweredge 6300
(4x Xeon 550, 4GB RAM, 5GB swap, aic7xxx) that is mainly used for
heavy statistical analysis of gene sequences.

Some of these jobs run at 1.8GB/process.

I'm running RH7.1 and (was running) 2.4.3-12 kernel.

The strange thing was, no matter how loaded the machine, no swap
was ever used (??). We started to get a severe shortage of resources
during backups with the message:

mm: critical shortage of bounce buffers (from highmem.c)
(I/O exhausting low memory)

The machine would eventually become so unresponsive that a hard reset was
the only option.

I've just upgraded to kernel 2.4.12 and swap is now being used :)
Stability has been good, even under extreme loads (test was: 3x 1.8GB processes
while doing a backup).

I find it strange that RH latest updated kernel is 2.4.9 but the vm problems
were not fixed until 2.4.10.

Any feedback on these issues is very welcome.

------------------------------------------

Steve Batson
System Administrator
Victorian Institute of Animal Science
Victoria, Australia
Email: steve.batson@nre.vic.gov.au

------------------------------------------


> From: Igor Mozetic <igor.mozetic@uni-mb.si>
> Date:   Sat, 27 Oct 2001 11:48:25 +0200
> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Any stable 2.4 kernel?
>
> I wonder if anybody has found a stable kernel for the following
> hardware: C440GX+, dual Xeon 550, 2GB RAM, 1GB swap, aic7xxx.
> Usage pattern is load > 2, highmem, not much I/O (maybe swap?).
> Some of our jobs take weeks, so stable means months between reboots.
>
> I found anything beyond 2.4.10 useless - lockups after a few days.
> Currently I run 2.4.3 with varying degree of success - initial lifespan
> was 4 months, but last reincarnation survived for 3 weeks only.
>
> Any recommendation for 2.4 or should I consider going back to 2.2 ?
> I don't need any fancy features (apart to SMP and highmem),
> only stability is important.
>
> -Igor Mozetic