Re: 1.3.72 instability

Linus Torvalds (Linus.Torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi)
Tue, 12 Mar 1996 07:26:10 +0200


Chris Evans: "1.3.72 instability" (Mar 11, 19:54):
>
> Anyway, 1.3.72 seems rather more keen to crash than other kernels,
> sometime to the point of complete hang... so here's a few OOPSES.
>
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address c1013583
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: current->tss.cr3 = 00267000,
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: *pde = 00001067
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: *pte = 00000000
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: Oops: 0000
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: CPU: 0
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: EIP: 0010:[<01013583>]
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: EFLAGS: 00010246
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: eax: 00000000 ebx: 00000000 ecx: 0006cf28 edx: 00000000
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: esi: 006a4390 edi: 00092aa8 ebp: bffffca8 esp: 0006cf44
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 002b gs: 002b ss: 0018
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: Process gpm (pid: 119, process nr: 24, stackpage=0006c000)
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: Stack: 00092aa8 010131eb 00000047 000000f4 01011040 00092aa8 006a4390 00000000
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: 001217dd 00092aa8 006a4390 006a4390 00000000 0058c000 0011fd76 00092aa8
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: 006a4390 00000000 00000000 00000002 00092aa8 0011fe2e 0058c000 00000002
> Mar 11 16:07:50 jcr00 kernel: Call Trace: [<010131eb>] [<01011040>] [<001217dd>]
> [<0011fd76>] [<0011fe2e>] [<0010a469>]
>
> EIP: 1013583: OUT OF RANGE
> 10131eb: "
> 1011040: "
> 1217dd: chrdev_open
> 11fd76: do_open
> 11fe2e: sys_open
> 10a469: system_call

I've seen a few of these, and they _all_ seem to be related to module
use. I simply cannot debug panic's that happen in a module (as you can
see, the stack trace and EIP are not even found by ksymoops), especially
as I don't even know _what_ module it is.

(It _looks_ like this might be a mouse module, as it's gpm that crashes,
but which one?)

I'd love to fix this, but I need more information. When does it seem to
happen? The above looks like it happened while trying to open the mouse
(?) device, but it obviously doesn't happen all the time, or your
machine wouldn't stay up for even one day..

For stability, you might try just compiling in the mouse driver instead
of using a module, but to be frank I'd much rather see the problem
fixed. And for that I'd need you to test it out a bit more and try to
find a pattern _when_ it happens, and more information on what your
system setup is (ie which module, how you load it etc etc)

Linus