Re: CPU failures ... or something else ?

[J Sloan <joe@tmsusa.com>]

FWIW, I had 3 identical 2450s similar to
yours, all with RH linux 7.2 installed -
2 of them were rock solid, the other had
random crashes, nothing in the logs, no
pattern to the crashes that I could see.

Dell had me upgrade/reflash the BIOS
and the perc raid controller, and the box
has been rock solid ever since...

Just my $.02 on the matter -

Joe

Josh Brooks wrote:

>Oh and by the way, this is a dell poweredge 2450, dual 866 p3 cpus, 2gigs
>ram, and using a PERC 3/D.  I have a 2.4.1 system running on _identical_
>hardware with no problems, and this system that is MCE'ing is a 2.4.16.
>
>So ... not sure if that raises any red flags as far as false/spurious MCEs
>are concerned, but either way comments are appreciated.
>
>I will try the nomce option just in case, but I suspect I have bad
>hardware.  Again, any comments / war stories appreciated.
>
>thanks!
>
>On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Bubba wrote:
>
>  
>
>>try turning off the Machine Check Exception in the kernel as it is just buggy
>>on some machines, not necessarily a bug in the kernel, or without
>>recompiling, use the kernel param "nomce"
>>
>>On Wednesday 25 December 2002 19:53, Josh Brooks wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>I have a dual p3 866 running 2.4 kernel that is crashing once every few
>>>days leaving this on the console:
>>>
>>>
>>>Message from syslogd@localhost at Tue Dec 24 11:30:31 2002 ...
>>>localhost kernel: CPU 1: Machine Check Exception: 0000000000000004
>>>
>>>Message from syslogd@localhost at Tue Dec 24 11:30:32 2002 ...
>>>localhost kernel: Bank 4: b200000000040151
>>>
>>>Message from syslogd@localhost at Tue Dec 24 11:30:32 2002 ...
>>>localhost kernel: Kernel panic: CPU context corrupt
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Word on the street is that this indicates hardware failure of some kind
>>>(cpu, bus, or memory).  My main question is, is that very surely the
>>>culprit, or is it also possible that all of the hardware is perfect and
>>>that a bug in the kernel code or some outside influence (remote exploit)
>>>is causing this crash ?
>>>
>>>Basically, I am ordering all new hardware to swap out, and I just want to
>>>know if there is some remote possibility that my hardware is actually just
>>>fine and this is some kind of software error ?
>>>
>>>ALSO, I have not been physically at the console when this has happened,
>>>and have not tried this yet, but whatever that thing is where you press
>>>ctrl-alt-printscreen and get to enter those post-crash commands - do you
>>>think that would work in this situation, or does the above error hard lock
>>>the system so you can't do those emergency measures ?
>>>
>>>thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>>-
>>>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>>>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>>>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>>Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>>>      
>>>
>>-
>>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>>
>>    
>>
>
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>  
>