Re: [PATCH] Documentation/oops-tracking update

Pete Wyckoff (wyckoff@ca.sandia.gov)
Mon, 27 Dec 1999 14:33:10 -0800


manfreds@colorfullife.com said:
> From: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>
> > I think it is bad advice, because a lot of problems only happen in SMP
> > mode or under high load that may need two cpus. The best advice is IMHO
> > to put a serial console onto it and log oopses from another computer.
> > In case of deadlocks the NMI oopser in 2.4 should solve that problem,
> > for 2.2 it may be useful to give a pointer to it.
> >
> Yesterday I tracked a bug in the SCSI layer: oops, the current CPU owned the
> io_request_lock:
>
> * oops.
> * a few seconds later: lock-up on the io_request_lock.
> * NMI oops detection: several additional oops'es, the screen scrolls down,
> ie you cannot copy it with paper&pencil.
> * was not logged to the disk because the io_request_lock was missing.
> * no serial console, no line printer was available.

As useful as the nmi watchdog can be, it's also handy to disable it at
times for cases like the above. Boot with "nmi_watchdog=0" to keep the
watchdog from scrolling away the _real_ oops.

-- Pete

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/