2.1.96: L2 cache corruption?

Henner Eisen (eis@baty.hanse.de)
Thu, 16 Apr 1998 20:07:08 +0200


Hi,

symptoms:

I untar'red a kernel source tree under two different directories.
After that, a diff -r on the two diretories randomly shows bogus differences
although all files are identical. This happens with 2.1.95 and 2.1.96.
(the last kernel I used before was 2.1.92 where I was at least not aware of
such behavior).

Now, after rebooting 2.0.33, diff reports bogus differences again.
Switching computer off and on, then diff: now all files are reported to
be identical (as it should be). Seems that 2.1.95 and above has a hardware
initialization problem.

First I suspected a bug related to recent scsi/PCI changes. I tried two
different scsi drivers (ncr53c8xx and 53c7,8xx) -- with both drivers, the
problem is present.

After that, I disabled the L2 cache before booting and the problem disappeared.

Hardware: i486 66MHz, Intel Saturn based motherboard with built in ncr 53c810
scsi controller, kernel compiled without SMP.

Can I do more tests to help tracking down the problem?

Henner

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