Bug#665413: BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:51:37 -0700 (PDT), Will Set <debiandunes@yahoo.com> wrote:

> the mobo has an 865g chipset.

Yes, i believe that's correct.

> I know of 5 bug reports that confirm using boot parameter - processor.nocst=1
> as a workaround for kernels < 2.6.38

Thanks, i will try this the next time i get a chance to restart this
machine (it's currently crashed again and i don't have physical access
right now).

Do you have a link to a couple of these bug reports so i could read them
myself?  I'd appreciate it if you do.

> linux-image-2.6.39 through linux-image 3.3.0-rc6-686-pae - on both of
> my 865g based boxes.

I'm not sure what this sentence means -- is it related to the sentence
above?  if so, how?

> Also, iirc, the bigmem kernel was swallowed by the 686-pae kernel, 
> which might be a reason for the instability when using 486.

I wouldn't expect the -486 flavor to be able to fully address all 4GiB
of RAM (i.e. i doubt it would make use of the physical address
extensions).  But i don't understand why this would cause instability.
My workload during these crashes is definitely not memory-intensive.
This is the first i'm hearing that the -486 flavor would cause
instability on highmem machines.

Can you point me to some documentation so i could understand why that
might be the case?

Thanks for your feedback,

        --dkg