The "really weird" problem I reported earlier seems to have
disappeared after setting auto config in the bios, PIO mode 1, and
cold-booting the system with a kernel compiled under 1.2.13.
However, I still have the problem that a sequence of
time dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/junk count=16 bs=1024k
will hang my system in 2-10 tries. This is with 2.0.21. First noticed
around 2.0.17. It won't completely hang, sooner or later it snaps out
of it, but it may be frozen for 15 min or more. The console shows the
message "Couldn't get a free page..."
Things that I've noted is that the dd command apparently gets very
high priority: if I do an ls of my home directory, I won't get a
response till dd has finished. I suspect that the lockups appear when
the dd is attempted while an NFS request is pending (not too sure on
that).
Here's a sample of /var/log/message around one of the times this thing
happened (ksym oops says that the AltR-ScrLock output is from
>>EIP: 11f242 <__get_free_pages+172/1b0>
Sep 20 17:57:22 bush last message repeated 4 times
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Mem-info:
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Free pages: 476kB
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: ( 3*4kB 58*8kB 0*16kB 0*32kB 0*64kB 0*128kB = 476kB)
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Swap cache: add 266/266, delete 146536/151, find 3898/59
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Free swap: 26652kB
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 4096 pages of RAM
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 123 free pages
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 366 reserved pages
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 1444 pages shared
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Buffer memory: 3264kB
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Buffer heads: 3600
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Buffer blocks: 3264
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Buffer[0] mem: 2 buffers, 0 used (last=0), 0 locked, 0 protected, 0 dirty 0 shrd
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Buffer[2] mem: 3246 buffers, 20 used (last=3243), 2 locked, 0 protected, 0 dirty 0 shrd
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Size [LAV] Free Clean Unshar Lck Lck1 Dirty Shared
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 512 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 1024 [ 8078]: 16 2 0 3246 0 0 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 2048 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 4096 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: 8192 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Networking buffers in use : 1
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Network buffers locked by drivers : 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Total network buffer allocations : 23592
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Total failed network buffer allocs : 1
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Total free while locked events : 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: IP fragment buffer size : 0
Sep 20 17:57:32 bush kernel: Couldn't get a free page.....
Sep 20 17:57:42 bush kernel: Couldn't get a free page.....
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel:
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: free sibling
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: task PC stack pid father child younger older
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: swapper 0 R 00000000 4096 0 0 1
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: init 1 S FFFFFFFF 2720 1 0 198
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: kflushd 2 S 00000000 4 2 1 3
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: kswapd 3 S 00000000 4 3 1 4 2
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: nfsiod 4 S 00000000 4 4 1 5 3
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: nfsiod 5 S 00000000 2516 5 1 6 4
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: nfsiod 6 S 00000000 2596 6 1 7 5
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: nfsiod 7 S 00000000 2552 7 1 53 6
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: X 8 S 0003A7A8 8 151 147 152
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: getty 9 S FFFFFFFF 4 141 1 142 125
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: getty 10 S FFFFFFFF 4 142 1 143 141
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: syslogd 11 S FFFFFFFF 4 53 1 62 7
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: klogd 12 R 00000000 4 62 1 73 53
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: crond 13 S 00000000 4 73 1 84 62
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: portmap 14 S FFFFFFFF 4 84 1 96 73
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: inetd 15 S FFFFFFFF 4 96 1 113 84
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: sendmail 16 S 00000000 3316 113 1 125 96
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: lpd 17 S FFFFFFFF 3072 125 1 141 113
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: getty 18 S FFFFFFFF 4 143 1 144 142
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: getty 19 S FFFFFFFF 4 144 1 145 143
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: getty 20 S FFFFFFFF 4 145 1 146 144
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: getty 21 S FFFFFFFF 4 146 1 147 145
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xdm 22 S FFFFFFFF 4 147 1 152 149 146
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xdm 23 S 00000000 4 152 147 160 151
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: update 24 S 00000000 1808 149 1 157 147
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xinitrc 25 S 00000000 4 160 152 167
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: fvwm 26 S FFFFFFFF 4 167 160 168
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xconsole 27 S FFFFFFFF 3420 157 1 170 149
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: GoodStuff 28 S FFFFFFFF 2544 168 167
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: bash 29 S 00000000 2452 175 170 194
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xterm 30 S FFFFFFFF 4 170 1 175 173 157
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: emacs 31 S 009B46C8 936 191 175 194
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xbiff 32 R 00000000 4 173 1 174 170
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xclock 33 S 0002CE39 4 174 1 198 173
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: bash 34 R 00000000 4 194 175 191
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: bash -35 R current 2440 199 198
Sep 20 17:57:44 bush kernel: xterm 38 S FFFFFFFF 4 198 1 199 174
Sep 20 17:57:49 bush kernel:
Sep 20 17:57:49 bush kernel: EIP: 0010:[<0011f242>] EFLAGS: 00000246
Sep 20 17:57:49 bush kernel: EAX: 00000000 EBX: 001b3a78 ECX: 00000002 EDX: 00000002
Sep 20 17:57:49 bush kernel: ESI: 00000004 EDI: 001b3a84 EBP: 00000006 DS: 0018 ES: 0018 FS: 002b GS: 002b
Sep 20 17:57:52 bush kernel: Couldn't get a free page.....
Sep 20 17:58:12 bush last message repeated 2 times
Sep 20 17:58:18 bush login: ROOT LOGIN ON tty2
Sep 20 17:58:22 bush kernel: Couldn't get a free page.....
Sep 20 17:59:02 bush last message repeated 4 times
Sep 20 18:00:02 bush last message repeated 6 times
Sep 20 18:01:02 bush last message repeated 6 times
<condition cleared 18:03>
-- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907