Strange kernel crashes

[José Luis Gómez Dans <j.l.gomez-dans@sheffield.ac.uk>]

Hi!
	I have installed potato recently (with the 2.2.8 install disks)
on my Athlon system (someone might remember the problems I had compiling
a new kernel for it; well that hasn't _yet_ happpened). This system has
2.2.14, and I am experiencing a rather lot of crashes. Most of the time,
these are just  pointer de-references (NULL pointers instead of
meaningful stuff), and ensuing kernel panics. One that happened today:

Mar 27 11:10:50 faust kernel: Call Trace: [sys_select+270/1264] [system_call+52/56] 
Mar 27 11:10:50 faust kernel: Code: 8b 01 89 03 85 c0 74 27 8b 53 04 85 d2 75 0e 89 19 89 c8 2b 
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: current->tss.cr3 = 0268f000, %cr3 = 0268f000
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: *pde = 00000000
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: Oops: 0000
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: CPU:    0
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: EIP:    0010:[kmalloc+75/336]
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: EFLAGS: 00010006
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: eax: c029bec4   ebx: c3fe9fe0   ecx: 00000000   edx: 00000013
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: esi: c3fef080   edi: 00000003   ebp: 00000282   esp: c26bbd10
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: ds: 0018   es: 0018   ss: 0018
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: Process bash (pid: 259, process nr: 18, stackpage=c26bb000)
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: Stack: 00000003 c02ed520 c0134024 00000013 00000015 c029d7f0 c26bbe68 c26ba000 
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel:        fffffff8 c011e9b5 c0244234 00000080 00000001 00000000 00000000 ffffffff 
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel:        00000000 00000000 c24f13e0 00000003 c02ed500 fffffff4 0029d804 00000000 
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: Call Trace: [load_elf_binary+568/2576] [do_generic_file_read+1353/1364] [cprt+1300/23589] [file_read_actor+0/84] [read_exec+180/336] [read_exec+322/336] [search_binary_handler+60/260] 
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel:        [do_execve+384/488] [do_execve+417/488] [sys_execve+44/100] [system_call+52/56] 
Mar 27 11:10:55 faust kernel: Code: 8b 01 89 03 85 c0 74 27 8b 53 04 85 d2 75 0e 89 19 89 c8 2b 
Mar 27 11:12:57 faust syslogd 1.3-3#33: restart.

	I can't compile any kernel that doesn't suffer of similar
problems earlier on (this happened when launching lynx, so the system
boots up nicely). In general, I get this problems with all sorts of
software. 

	I don't know what's wrong here (could it be faulty memory?). I
have tried re-compiling a kernel with the minimum amount of stuff I can
get away with, but that doesn't seem to help at all. I must be
forgetting something (and I'm using gcc not egcs, even though the
problems are independent of whatever compiler I use). The sytesm is an
AMD K7 %00 MHz, in an MSI-6167 motherboard with an IDE hdd, 64 megs of
RAM and all that.

	I have downloaded and installed memtest86, but after a weekend
of testing, it was still doing test #2. I don't know how to  use this
thing really :-/

	Does anyone have any clues to what might be going wrong?
	BTW, I am going to be unsubscribing to the list for a while, as
I'm not going to be around. Could you please CC replies to me as well,
please?

	Thanks for your help,
	José
-- 
José L Gómez Dans			PhD student
					Radar & Communications Group
					Department of Electronic Engineering
					University of Sheffield UK