Load Averages ridiculously high in 2.1.36

David A. Gatwood (marsmail@globegate.utm.edu)
Tue, 20 May 1997 16:34:17 -0500 (CDT)

Background: due to the absence of documentation on linux-pmac's main ftp
site (i.e. no obvious mention that 2.1.XX are development kernels w/o
DL'ing the whole source tarball), I installed 2.1.24. It's pretty stable,
but the appletalk implementation doesn't work. (I'm running linux-pmac
due to panics from the compiler under MkLinux). To get appletalk working,
I decided to try 2.1.36. Knowing that 2.1.24's distribution compile from
their site didn't have appletalk turned on, I dl'ed the sources for
2.1.36, compiled. Appletalk works, but the load average is... hosed.

Symptoms: A few minutes (under an hour) after booting, the load
skyrockets. I rebooted (since the web server suddenly stopped and kill
didn't work, even with -9), and under an hour later, it happened again.
Iswitched back to 2.1.24 before it hit 30. The system otherwise seemed to
behave normally, at least as best I could tell over a 28.8 modem link.

Kernel: 2.1.36 No modules installed, Firewall support turned on, along
with IP MASQ, Appletalk, compiled for ppc (linux-pmac).

Changes from the default:
CONFIG_BINFMT_AOUT
CONFIG_FIREWALL
CONFIG_NET_ALIAS (this may be default?)
CONFIG_IP_FIREWALL
CONFIG_IP_MASQUERADE
CONFIG_IP_TRANSPARENT_PROXY
CONFIG_ATALK
CONFIG_SYSV_FS
CONFIG_AFFS_FS
CONFIG_UFS_FS
CONFIG_BSD_DISKLABEL
CONFIG_SMD_DISKLABEL
all individual IDE settings turned off

All other configurations are the linux-pmac defaults (i.e. powermac
drivers). Compiling the 2.1.24 kernel in the same fashion results in an
inability to start atalkd (i.e. Appletalk not up! Child exited with
status 1). This occurs with both versions 1.3.3 and 1.4.something.

output of ver_linux:

-- Versions installed: (if some fields are empty or looks
-- unusual then possibly you have very old versions)
Linux globegate 2.1.24 #2 Mon May 19 18:20:17 CDT 1997 ppc
Kernel modules 2.1.23
Gnu C 2.7.2.1
Binutils 2.7
./ver_linux: ldd: command not found
awk: cmd. line:1: (FILENAME=- FNR=1) fatal: attempt to access field -1
./ver_linux: ldd: command not found
ls: /usr/lib/libg++.so: No such file or directory
Procps 1.01
Mount 2.5
Net-tools 1.1.95
Kbd command
Sh-utils 1.12

Note that the absence of ldd is because I'm not using shared libraries
yet.

Does anyone know of a version of Linux 2.1 with working appletalk support
that is remotely stable? Alternately, is there a patch for Linux 2.1.24
for appletalk support, perhaps?

David Gatwood
marsmail@globegate.utm.edu
davagatw@globegate.utm.edu
davagatw@mars.utm.edu (hence the first)
dgatwood@nyx.net (infrequently read)
etc.