Re: 2.0.pre31-2 + Werner patch of Aug 1: Bunch of Oopses.

Philippe Strauss (philou@lili.urbanet.ch)
4 Aug 1997 19:05:11 -0500


On %M %N, Dr. Werner Fink wrote
> > > Hmmm ... 1.18i should be a stable one. If the hardware (setup, ram speed,
> > > and cooling) is OK ...
> > >
> >
> > Yeap, furthemore, I can reproduce it at 100% with 2.0.pre31-2 + your patch,
> > and had never any problem with 17july (or 22? dont remember), nor with 2.0.29.
>
> Hmmm .. there are only slight differences between 17july, 22july, and
> 1august patch. Are there any other patches included during the time?

I dont think so. It's been a while that I include those patches:
3000 filehandles
ext2 error handling
filetable perf. improvement (Philip Gladston, i think)
stack not exec.

Maybe i reintroduiced the huge # of filehandles recently. Also the
patch printout is recent, but i doubt three line of character in the
version string would cause much grief :)

Futhemore: I'm writing this under 2.0.30 + pre2 + 1 august buff patch,
and I've been unable to trigger the bug ... Hmmm, ft.pf, available at linuxhq,
touch the filesystem, as the huge # of fd's.

> The only real change between 22july and 1augus patch is: the debugging hack
> in try_to_free_page() of mm/vmscan.c is removed and an paranoid setting for
> swap_out() is added.
>
> This change would only fail if try_to_swap_out() has at most return values
> greater than 1 ... which would produce a "Couldn't get free page"
> or something similar.
>
> ... it would very exiting if the old hack with the run_task_queue(&tq_disk)
> is a ``solution''. IMHO this would indicate a real bug im the memory
> management.
>
> Do you have a 2.0.29 available for testing (LILO boot: linux.old)?
> Only for a hardware check up.

Yeap, as i said in the rest of my message, i use 2.0.29 + ext2 error handling +
stack not exec + patch printout. Here's the boot message of 2.0.29:

Aug 4 21:54:17 lili kernel: Linux version 2.0.29 (root@lili) (gcc version 2.7.2p snapshot 970721) #13 Tue Jul 29 00:04:08 CEST 1997
Aug 4 21:54:17 lili kernel: *** Installed patches:
Aug 4 21:54:17 lili kernel: Ext2 error handling
Aug 4 21:54:17 lili kernel: Linux Unofficial Patch Printout
Aug 4 21:54:17 lili kernel: Stack not-exec
Aug 4 21:54:17 lili kernel: *** End of Patches

(2.0.29 compiled with pgcc -O2 -mpentium - rock stable)

And the the faulty 2.0.pre31-2

Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: Linux version 2.0.30 (root@lili) (gcc version 2.7.2.1) #1 Fri Aug 1 22:13:40 CEST 1997
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: *** Installed patches:
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: buffer werner 1.8.97
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: ext2 error handling
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: 3000 filehandles
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: file table
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: Linux Unofficial Patch Printout (2.0.30)
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: pre31-2 (DaveM)
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: patches printout
Aug 4 21:36:12 lili kernel: *** End of Patches

Hmmm, i suspect either ft.pf or the filehandle patch..
Will add them and recompile.

> Werner

Cheers, thanks for you time and your work on the buffer code.

-- 
Philippe Strauss <philou@lili.urbanet.ch>

Homepage & PGP key: http://lili.urbanet.ch

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

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