I don't know whether this has cropped up before, but for grins I was
running 'strings /dev/hdc3 | more' looking for some text (which wasn't
there) in one of my swap partitions. (Call me bored, I suppose.)
I was very amazed when the command abruptly stopped with an Oops logged
into my system log.
Here's the Oops text:
VFS: brelse: Trying to free free buffer
Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address c4bdb538
current->tss.cr3 = 00bf1000,
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0002
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[refile_buffer+266/872]
EFLAGS: 00010212
eax: 04a0001c ebx: 0176d098 ecx: 00000001 edx: 00000001
esi: 00749400 edi: 00000000 ebp: 0176d098 esp: 01614d04
ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 002b gs: 002b ss: 0018
Process strings (pid: 1271, process nr: 67, stackpage=01614000)
Stack: 0176d098 00749400 01614e94 0176d098 04a0001c 00127012 0176d098 00000000
00129bb0 0176d098 00000000 00a8b880 00001000 02ec3200 00000000 00005018
00000400 00000000 00000001 00001000 00000000 02f3e098 00000008 00000000
Call Trace: [__brelse+62/96] [LASHRDI4+783/871] [inode_getblk+70/400] [make_request+992/1004] [merge_segments+1181/1260] [kfree+226/288] [<0384aff9>]
[<0384c6ec>] [<0384af00>] [timer_bh+885/964] [do_bottom_half+59/92] [handle_bottom_half+11/24] [pipe_write+444/492] [<03851137>] [<03851b40>]
[sys_read+200/240] [system_call+85/124]
Code: ff 88 1c b5 1d 00 8b 53 0c 85 d2 74 06 8b 43 38 89 42 38 8b
I figure that there's something in refile_buffer, as that's where it
died.
I tried running this through ksymoops after stripping off the 'belvdere
kernel:" parts of the syslog, but ksymoops still complains and tells me
to do some more stripping of text -- as far as I can tell, the file
should be OK as is. I'm just a novice with respect to ksymoops; perhaps
someone can give me guidance off-list as to its use.
Some extras:
Kernel is 2.0.34 as gotten from ftp.kernel.org and compiled as a
"monolithic kernel" without sound support (trying out OSS at the
moment) using the egcs-1.0.1 compiler throughout - i.e.,
Pentium-optimized kernel build. I'm running Redhat 5.0 (mostly, but
have some other stuff) on a makeshift Pentium-100 (built from parts)
with 48 megs of RAM and 64 megs of swap space. /dev/hdc3 is the second
of the two 32meg (roughly) swap partitions.
I'm going to play a bit more and see if this is repeatable. One thing I
note is that it ran through my first swap partition OK -- didn't Oops
there.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
David E. Fox Tax Thanks for letting me
dfox@belvdere.vip.best.com the change magnetic patterns
root@belvedere.sbay.org churches on your hard disk.
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