Re: Linux - SMP

[George Bonser <grep@shorelink.com>]

On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, Daniel Mashao wrote:

> Hi,
> I have had problems before but now I am running Debian Linux on an SMP
> machine and it crashes once a week or so. It locks real hard and all I can
> do is press the on/off switch to get started. 
> I suspected the memory but all the tests I know of do not seem to
> indicate the problem is with the memory (e.g. recompiling the kernel
> n-times).
> 

This is normal for busy SMB servers under 2.0.x kernels. Linus himself
said there are so many problems with 2.0 and SMB that he gave up trying to
fix it last spring and completely re-wrote the SMB code for the 2.1
kernels.

In a nutshell, 2.0.x is just about guaranteed to lock up on a busy system.
These will be completely at random, they are caused by kernel deadlocks
and race conditions that can not be cleared ... reset is the only way out.
The trouble will most likely happen when it is engaged in a
kernel-intesive activity such as serving web pages. Is this machine a web
server? (moving data from disk to network is almost entirely kernel work).
Compiling a kernel is almost entirely non-kernel related and you can load
the machine up with as many compiles as you want without triggering the
problem. (compiler is running in user space).

You have three choices:

1. Live with it
2. Compile a non-SMB kernel
3. move to a 2.1.x kernel.



George Bonser

The Linux "We're never going out of business" sale at an FTP site near you!