[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Frequent kernel crashes on old non-ACPI hardware with 2.6.16+



Greetings,

I have a seven-year old dual 450 MHz PIII machine which I upgraded from
sarge to etch about a month ago.  Running 2.6.16, 2.6.17 and 2.6.18
stock kernels, I have had frequent lockups, on the order of two to four
per day before I go back to 2.6.8, but five just this morning between
9:30 AM and noon.  I dare say this is even worse than Windows 95...

With no keyboard interaction, the machine is very stable, it stays up
for days.  I have rsynced multi-gibibyte trees to and from it repeatedly
with no problem.  But with normal interaction at the keyboard, the
machine hangs within 10-60 minutes.  It has hung both in X and at the
console, it stops echoing pings, and at the console it does not print
any oops or other messages though the cursor keeps blinking.

Other unrelated issues:

What is frustrating is that with the new udev and a pre-2.6.15 kernel,
not only are USB devices unusable, but evolution often hangs while
retrieving messages, and after such a hang refuses to start again.  I
don't think this is an evolution bug, I think it is waiting in vain for
something from dbus or hal perhaps.

If acpid is installed, the GNOME panel won't fully start under 2.6.16+:
at least one applet seem to hang the whole panel, though it works under
2.6.8.  I purged acpid a long time ago, and this behavior stopped.  I
could also get it to stop with acpid installed by booting with
pci=norouteirq.

Also, unless I boot with acpi=off, the network is completely
unreachable.  This is bug #387025, but as mentioned, unrelated to these
hangs.

I think the common thread here is ACPI, or rather, lack of ACPI in this
machine.  Are others without ACPI support having similar troubles?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Cheers,
-Adam
-- 
GPG fingerprint: D54D 1AEE B11C CE9B A02B  C5DD 526F 01E8 564E E4B6

Welcome to the best software in the world today cafe!
http://www.take6.com/albums/greatesthits.html



Reply to: