Re: Linux SMP kernel bug with > 512M ram

From: jeff@AmeriCom.com
Date: Fri Sep 06 2002 - 15:50:26 EST


I don't think its chipset or memory, the machines that crash have different brand
motherboards with different chipsets, I ran docmem for 24 hours on each stick of ram
and found no errors. The ram worked fine in my WindowsXP machine, and it works fine
when I use the non-smp kernel, and/or when I take the ram down to 2 sticks (512
meg). I'm posting here because I believe I have narrowed it down to a bug in the
kernel.

> On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:55, jeff@AmeriCom.com wrote:
> > I've been having problems with a few of our servers and I can't seem to find
this
> > problem mentioned anywhere else. All of the dual processor machines will not
operate
> > with greater than 512 megs of ram with the newer SMP kernels (2.4.7-10enterprise
#1
>
> 2.4.7 is hardly "new". Red Hat has issued errata kernels going up to
> 2.4.9.
>
> > SMP). Two of the dual P3 1ghz machines crash after a few minutes, when the
memory
> > usage gets high enough, I presume. The errors they spit out vary, but its only
when
> > I go over 512megs of ram, and only on dual processor machines. I had a slightly
>
> Chipset or memory hardware problems seem the most likely cause if the
> errors seem random or weird
>
> > different problem when I tried to set it up on a dual p2 266 machine, when I go
over
> > 512 megs there, the system takes an hour to boot up, and everything crawls from
>
> Thats BIOS. Thats a well known BIOS problem where the BIOS doesnt
> configure the mtrr registers properly. You can work around that one by
> tweaking the settings by hand or probably by getting a newer BIOS
>
>
>

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