Re: Oops in kswapd (Kernel 2.4.17)

[Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au>]

Patrick Burns wrote:
> 
> Is there some kind of memory problem with kernel 2.4.17? I noticed in an
> article at:
> 
> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101096234600708&w=2
> 
> and another at:
> 
> http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0201.1/0809.html
> 
> that people were getting oopses in kswapd.

One does begin to think that there may be a problem.  The inode,
dentry and buffer caches do involve a lot of pointer chasing,
and do tend to expose hardware problems (memory), and we've tended
to assume that's the reason for all the reports.

But there are a *lot* of reports, and the same argument applies:
the long pointer chases will expose random memory corruption caused
by a kernel bug.

It's starting to look fishy.

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