2.2.16: How to freeze the kernel

From: Ulrich Windl (Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni-regensburg.de)
Date: Fri Nov 24 2000 - 03:10:58 EST


Hello,

this is for your interest, amusement, and for "what not to do":

I managed to freeze the kernel (2.2.16 from SuSE Linux 7.0) in a way
that I could not even switch virtual consoles. Completely silent
eberything...

It all started when Windows/95 ruined another CD-R while trying to
write an image to the media. So I decided to try it with Linux, using
the same CD writer.

I plugged the device to the so far unused SCSI channel and used the
"add-sigle-device" method to avoid reboot, and I succeeded:

kgate kernel: scsi singledevice 0 0 4 0
kgate kernel: Vendor: WAITEC Model: WT624 Rev: 7.0F
kgate kernel: Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI
revision: 0
kgate kernel: Detected scsi CD-ROM sr1 at scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0
kgate kernel: (scsi0:0:4:0) Synchronous at 10.0 Mbyte/sec, offset 15.
kgate kernel: sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda
tray

Then I used "cdrecord-1.8.1" to simulate writing at "speed=8". It
worked so far, but there was a warning about possible problems with
"simulated fixation", and actually several minutes nothing happened
while the simulated fixation was expected to take place.

At some point I hit ^C, returning to the prompt. As the device did not
seem to be ready, I thought "remove the device and reconnect", so I did
"remove-single-device" (possibly while a command was still "busy"). The
remove suceeded, but a second later everything had stopped!

Should a device with busy commands be able to be removed? I guess no...

The last message in the syslog was:

kgate kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 8358,
 scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0 UNKNOWN(0x5b) 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

At that point I pressed "RESET", and interestingly the builtin BIOS of
the Adaptec 2740 (EISA) hung while trying to detect the device.

Only after powering down both, the CD writer and the machine (a HP
Netserver LD Pro), the BIOS detected the device again. So I guess
something badly hung...

The driver being used was
Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.31/3.2.4

After that, everything worked fine.

Regards,
Ulrich

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 30 2000 - 21:00:11 EST