In surfing around for what might be causing this, I found the following in
the freeBSD documents:
---- cut here
Certain motherboards lie about their timer INT source, causing APIC_IO
kernels to lockup:
P6DNE:
Some motherboards provide inaccurate information about their 8254 timer
INTerrupt connection to the I/O
APIC, causing kernel lockup.
Add the following line to <SMP_SRC>/sys/i386/conf/<SMP_CONFIG_FILE>:
options SMP_TIMER_NC
Then config, build, and install an APIC_IO kernel.
--- end cut
I found this interesting, as this is about the motherboard which I am
using. I'm using kernel version 2.0.30-6 with a P6DNE with duel ppro-166
chips.
Does the linux do anything to handle the above hardware issue? If this is
the cause of my lockups I would be willing to get another motherboard if
it's not something likely to be handled in kernel space anytime soon. But
I don't want to shell out the money for a new motherboard if the problem
lies elsewhere.
Thanks-
jeff
-- "UNIX is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius (or at any rate, a programmer) to understand and appreciate its simplicity"-Dennis Ritchie [USENIX '87]