2.6 kernel causes crashes when transfering large files

bert_ · n00b Joined: 05 Nov 2003 Posts: 12

Hi, I've been running gentoo for a few monthes now and was having fun. I started out with the 2.6 beta kernels and most everything worked (after getting my video card going). About a month ago my HD failed and all I had left was the boot partition with my kernel from 2.6.0 beta 9. When I finialy got time to set the comp up again 2.6.1 was out so I setup with that. But, now I get funny crashes with no panics or messages or anything.

If I try to transfer large amounts of files from one disk to another (ex: emerge -f ... on another comp and bringing it home to the dailup computer) the system freezes completely. I don't know whats going on but I'm pretty sure it's in the kernel because the system runs fine for days/weeks on the recovered 2.6-beta9 kernel I had before--cant use this kernel all the time because it doesn't have my agp modules or a few other things.

my question is, anyone know from experience what kind of kernel make options I should look into to find the problem? I'm thinking that I have something included in the beta9 kernel that is not in the 2.6.1/2.6.1 kernels I've made. I've tried turning off'/onall powermanagement and adding different IDE controllers and still no change. (acctually I got 3gigs to transfer last night on 2.6.2 with powermanagement on module only, but then crashed after shutting down X for the night)

Here is my hardware:
Athlon XP 2800+ Asus A7N8X deluxe board with an ata100 hard drive.

ps. emerge sync sometimes causes crashes if I am really out of date and a lot of files are transfered.

dsd · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 10:22 pm Post subject:

nforce2 board? thats a common problem.
do you have APIC/IOAPIC enabled? if you disable these, it will reduce the frequency of the problem...

some guys on the linux kernel list have been investigating this, it appears to be an AMD/nvidia bug.

see this post for explanation and patches.

those patches solved the problem for me, booting with apic_tack=2
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bhartin · n00b Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 21

Okay, no more posting for me at 3am....nevermind, I mis-read the issue...

dsd · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 10:46 pm Post subject:

hard lockups are (generally) not kernel bugs. any hardware developer should attempt to make it so that hardware cannot be crashed by software...

but, in some cases, hardware bugs are triggered by kernel bugs (or sometimes even normal usage, like the nforce2 case) and cause a system freeze.

bhartin,which hardware are you using?
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bert_ · n00b Joined: 05 Nov 2003 Posts: 12

ok, it's cool that people know what I'm talking about--I didn't have hope cause it seemed very out of the ordinary.

I'll try to patches at home, but I might have to wait cause the latest crash seemed to mess some file locations up.

thanks