Kernel 2.2.* freezes

Nils Faerber (Nils.Faerber@unix-ag.org)
Sun, 10 Oct 1999 18:33:41 +0200

Hello!
Since my machine experiences the already mentioned freezes I started trying
to figure out the reason. Maybe my experiences can help fixing the bug
whereever it is.
What I did so far:
- kernel 2.2.5 seems rather stable, the most stable I have tested by now
but not completely stable; it froze this morning too. But after I
disabled the kernel option "Allow interrupts during APM BIOS calls" it
seems quiet OK.
- kernel 2.2.6 freezes rather often so I thought there must be a change
from 2.2.5 to 2.2.6 which causes this. So I split the 2.2.6 patch into
248 single patches and applied only those that seemed unsuspicious, i.e.
patches to parts that I either do not use anyway or that looked really
harmless (adding header files and so on). On the buttomline the new 2.2.6
kernel also froze!
- This tells me that the freezes are not directly kernel related. It seems
to be a very nasty timing problem that can be toggled when the kernel
becomes bigger (is that at all possible???)
- So I thought of other solutions. I used RedHat's egcs all the time and
thought that timing is also influenced by the compiler. So I installed
gcc-2.7.2.3 and tell you what:
the machine is stable for almost the whole day now.
I have tested anything that made it freeze sooner or later but it runs
fine until now. The used kernel now is 2.2.13pre15 which showed the
freezes too with egcs from RH 6.0.
May that have been the problem alll the time? Are we seeing an egcs bug
here?
I hope my machine keeps stable now (crossing fingers ;)
CU
nils

-- 
Nils Faerber (Linux Nils)        eMail: nils@unix-ag.org
Student of computer science      http://www.si.unix-ag.org/~nils/
Unix user group, University of Siegen, Germany


Siegen ... the arctic rain forest!

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