Re: The stability crisis

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Thu, 1 Jul 1999 17:24:38 +0100 (BST)

> That's pretty much been my experience. 2.2.10 crashes on a regular
> basis. Certainly more than previous kernels. Why? Who's to say? It
> leaves behind no information. Nothing in the logs, nothing in dmesg
> (which changes with each boot up, anyhow). There's no way to try the
> magic SysRq key, as the keyboard is completely locked up. I can't
> telnet/ssh/ftp/ping the box, as it evidently stops processing all
> network requests. In short, there is absolutely no indication, not the
> slightest oops or byte left over, to even begin to give the inkling of a
> clue about why the system crashed. So how do you debug that? I don't

With the kernel debugging patches is a good start

> even know how to cause the crash; usually i get up in the morning, or
> come home from work, to find the machine all locked up.

Turn off APM, set the BIOS to disable USB legacy keyboard support as a
starter. That isolates you from anything interesting in the BIOS space.
Also if its crashing 2.0.x as well then thats important info

> This particular machine is an AMD K6-2/350 *not* OC'ed, 64M Ram, Asus

Shipped with a little label on top of the chip and the heatsink/fan slapped
on top of that ? (that may sound stupid but I keep coming across these!)

Alan

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