Kernel Error Message: modprobe used greatest stack depth

[Peter Teoh]

In less than 6 hours since I turned on the machine I have been getting
these message (spread over different times) in my dmesg:

Machine A (AMD Athlon 4200, 3G RAM):

khelper used greatest stack depth: 7484 bytes left
modprobe used greatest stack depth: 7184 bytes left
mknod used greatest stack depth: 6976 bytes left
showconsole used greatest stack depth: 6904 bytes left
modprobe used greatest stack depth: 5600 bytes left
mysearch.pl used greatest stack depth: 5536 bytes left
mysearch.pl used greatest stack depth: 5496 bytes left
firefox-bin used greatest stack depth: 5484 bytes left
totem-video-thu used greatest stack depth: 5324 bytes left
thunderbird-bin used greatest stack depth: 4864 bytes left

And another machine (intel, 3G RAM):

[    0.123030] khelper used greatest stack depth: 2768 bytes left
[    3.518510] insmod used greatest stack depth: 2148 bytes left
[    6.203832] insmod used greatest stack depth: 1424 bytes left

Seemingly harmless, but when it hit firefox, the entire firefox will
hang - and it does not respond to any keyboard/mouse input.   Since it
has hit two of my machine simultaneously, I don't it should be
ignored.

Can someone help me?

a.   How do I probe further the cause of the error?
b.   Seemingly repeatable ..... how to generate a BUG() stack trace at
the point of error - recompiling really needed?
c.   Kernel version 2.6.28-rc6, with FTRACE compiled option turned on.
  HOw do I used FTRACE to de

-- 
Regards,
Peter Teoh

Ernest Hemingway - "Never mistake motion for action."
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