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Re: Kernel panic; help!



On Thu, Sep 14, 2000 at 02:00:13PM +0200, Julio Merino wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Some days ago I was playing with noflushd/apmd and such things, and I
> got a kernel panic. I rebooted. Debian was completly a mess,
> complaining about libncurses5 was failing. I need to remove /bin/sh
> and link it to ash to be able to boot. Then, I reinstalled libncurses5
> and at last I was able to boot. Everything seemed ok... but it wasn't.
> 
> I noticed today that all modules of 2.4-test8 disappered, so I needed
> to boot with my old 2.2.16 kernel. The system booted properly and I
> thank everything was ok. But wrong!

you have experienced fairly severe filesystem corruption, cleaning up
after such things is generally a nightmare.  did you run fsck i
presume?  (fsck a four letter word for a reason...) 

> Now, when I'm working with the system (I've noticed that it happens
> mainly when I'm doing nothing) it gives me a kernel panic. It tells me
> about all registers (as you know) and then I get:
>       during idle task
>       can't manage swap page
> I don't remember properly the exact message but it's something like
> this. So I tried with another kernel (thinking 2.2.16 could be
> corrupted) and used a 2.2.14 image that I have. Same problem. It
> apperes randomly.
> 
> I also tried the following, without success:
>   swapoff /dev/hda2
>   mkswap -c /dev/hda2
>   swapon /dev/hda2
> thinking that the problem could come with this, but didn't solve it.
> 
> I'm thinking that the problem is (maybe) in libc or something.

hard to say, could be, i just had some filesystem corruption on one of
my boxes today too (i believe the disk is dying) after a fsck i had
some random stuff in /var/lib/dpkg/info replaced by symlinks, random
corruption (files full of nulls and binary crap) files turned into
directories, etc.  (can a dying disk cause this type of damage?  the
kernel is/was 2.2.16, now 2.2.17, its been fine since january) 

> Any help is appreciated.

there is a point when this type of damage is more trouble to repair
then it is to just rebuild the system, if the packaging system is
still intact a dpkg --get-selections \* > selections will get you a
file to restore your package selections (and avoid a long boring
dselect session) backup /etc/ (and restore only what you need after
checking it) backup /home and /var/mail of course.  and a system
rebuild really won't take too long.  

> Thanks.
> 
> PS: I don't need to solve this because I want to reinstall a new
> system, but I would like to keep this woody working until I can get my
> new linux box perfectly functional and working.

isn't it great to have a release name that makes nearly every comment
sound perverted ;-)

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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