Stability, XFS, preempt, nVidia, KDE, all kinds of shi te...

mdpye

I have a new Athlon XP 2100+ box with a KT333 chipset, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 and I have compiled Gentoo on it in a very similar manner as on my old PIII. However, where the PIII was rck solid, I am seeing segfaults abound and regular lockups of Konqueror, Kicker, KDM and Konsole, particularly when I'm emerging. These are genuine freezes, a la winblows, and I'm not used to them.

Also, I am seeing starange results from top, for example the following is sorted by CPU usage. Notice the 0.2% idle time, and yet the running processes only amount to 8% usage. I am also seeing very high load averages (2.5+).

trythil · Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2002 11:41 pm Post subject:

Preemptive kernel + low latency patches should be considered highly experimental. The same software configuration on different hardware configurations, as you know (or should know, heh) never guarantees similar stability.

There's some material here in the Gentoo forums about people experiencing odd behavior using those + XFS. The fact that these occur when you're emerging seems to point the fault not at KDE, but rather a bad interaction between the patches and the filesystem.

However, think you could capture some system log output and post it here?

delta407 · Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2002 12:26 am Post subject:

Try disabling one or both, recompiling the kernel, and running diagnostics again.
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taskara · Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2002 12:32 am Post subject:

hey - I have a feeling it might be the mainboard.

We built about 30 pcs with that mainboard here, and almost all of them had HUGE stability problems (we had windows not linux).

Some of them were ram, others were incompatibilities with the NIC, and other things.

Try stripping your mainboard of all non-neccesary components, run some ram testers, and update to the latest bios version.

http://ftp.gigabyte.com.tw/support/temp/7vrxp_f7.zip

goodluck!

Malakin · Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2002 8:56 am Post subject:

My main box uses a GA-7VRXP and I've sold quite a few. Never seen a single problem.

You could run a memory tester on it.
http://www.memtest86.com/

You could also try a vanilla kernel. I'm using 2.4.18-pre7 with preempt patch.

mdpye · Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2002 1:14 pm Post subject:

Robert · Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2002 6:27 am Post subject:

KiTaSuMbA · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 430 Location: Naples Italy

There are 2 different big NO-NOs here:
XFS + preempt: this must be one of the reasons for your box cowardly falling on emerging
nVIDIA + Athlon XP: there has been a rather big bruhaha on the LKML (linux kernel mail list) as AMD has posted information on why and how this happens along with a 2.4.19 patch to at least limit these freezes.

I also use nVIDIA + Athlon XP and I have witnessed such freezes on both slack (vanilla 2.4.18 + nVIDIA) as well as gentoo (XFS). These freezes were the very reason I opted for a journaled filesystem and XFS was the best choice. Chosing XFS though prevented me from using preempt, as I had already heard of the "dogfight" these 2 patches were having inside the kernel.
Interestingly, not pushing the agp too hard (blackbox instead of kde, 1280x1024 instead of 1600x1200) made on both distros these lockups less frequent.
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klieber · Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2002 5:28 pm Post subject:

I have the same motherboard that you do, combined with an Athlon XP 1800. I use the nvidia drivers, pre-empt and low-latency kernel patches and have _zero_ stability problems. I'm also not using the on-board audio, though I doubt that makes a difference.

What I don't use: XFS and grsecurity. I use ext3 and don't have grsecurity compiled in my kernel. (even as a module) Thus, I would look at the following as possible culprits: (in order)

XFS
grsecurity
Bad RAM
CPU overheating

Though in the case of the heat issue, it would likely fry your CPU rather than just cause random instabilities.

My $.02.

--kurt
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delta407 · Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2002 5:34 pm Post subject:

abhishek · Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2002 5:36 pm Post subject:

WHile we're on cpu heat, what progs for linux can monitor temp sensors on my mb(soyo dragon)?

klieber · Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2002 5:48 pm Post subject:

klieber · Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2002 5:51 pm Post subject:

delta407 · Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2002 5:57 pm Post subject:

Ozymandias · Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2002 9:45 am Post subject:

try 'mem=nopentium' as a boot parameter to the kernel, as this might be the bug with AMD and AGP and speculative write.

greetz Ozy

mdpye · Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2002 1:57 pm Post subject:

mdpye · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 3:45 pm Post subject: OK, I've fixed it

Removing pre-empt from the kernel does indeed solve the problem, I've been happily playing for a few hours now with no problems. I think we might need a note in the install text though, at the point where XFS is recommended poiting out that preempt should NOT be used together with it...
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klieber · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 4:11 pm Post subject: Re: OK, I've fixed it

Malakin · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 7:12 pm Post subject:

klieber · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 7:32 pm Post subject:

mdpye · Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 8:00 pm Post subject:

leej · Apprentice Joined: 18 May 2002 Posts: 280

chatwood2 · Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2002 6:52 pm Post subject:

Just thought I'd throw in my 2c.

I'm running a Athlon XP 1800 with an nvidia geforce4 TI4600 (running at 1600x1024) and XFS. I have not had any problems with the "amd agp bug" and never had issues with random lockups, XFS speed or file corruption. My kernel was the 2.4.18 xfs-sources (thus no pre-emp or low-latency).

I'd suggest changing your cooling setup, artic silver is definaly he way to go with modern CPUs, it helps a ton. Also, disable pre-emp and low-latency if you want to use XFS, they just don't play nice.

- Chris

mdpye · Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2002 8:22 pm Post subject:

AnimalMachine · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2002 12:55 pm Post subject:

When I bought my TB 1.4 a while back, I got this monster golden orb heat sink (I think the 7200 rpm model). It was quite a mistake because the dang thing is L O U D! There's definatly something to be said for having a quiet heatsink. In retrospect it was pretty stupid not to realize it would be loud - it was the 7200 rpm model after all, not the 5400 one.

FWIW, I just pieced together a 1800xp system from a retail box cpu. While the heatsink looks flakey it's small, quiet, and seems to get the job done. I have a normal case with one case fan installed by the cpu (can't remember the air movement rate, but nothing special) and a Geforce 3 (original make) in there, so it gets warm, but so far I've had no problems - even with extended periods of gaming in UT, Evercrack, and Warcraft 3.