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SubjectRe: [SMP patch] io-apic-patch-2.1.97-A
On Sun, Apr 19, 1998 at 04:56:43PM +0200, MOLNAR Ingo wrote:
>
> for those who still have 2.1.97 SMP boot/device problems, here is a 2.1.97
> patch that works around one rather rare BIOS bug. It has a chance to make
> a difference on Dell Poweredge and certain Micronics boards (but other
> boards might be affected as well).
>
> if there is still anyone with a board having fundamental SMP troubles
> around, then please let me know ASAP. Most common 'fundamental' problems:
>
> - 'soft' or 'hard' hang at boot
> or - some device doesnt work at all, driver says something nasty but
> the system works under 2.0.33 or on uniprocessor kernels just
> fine
> or - system boots but strange 'IPI' messages pop up and system hangs
> quickly
> or - [or other symptoms]

I guess mine falls into this category. I have two problems which
might or might not be related to each other.

1. Processes mysteriously die during a long (more than 2 hour)
comple. The dead process can't be killed and shows 'D' in
ps. If that process happens to be linked to a device, that
device is continually 'busy' and only a reboot can free it.
Any other process that touches the 'busy' device also dies.
If this device is the root file system, the system processes
will also (eventually) die, leaving the system in a "hung"
state. No net access is possible and the Magic SysRq keys
work (sorta) most of the time. <Magic-boot usually does.>
This happens 100% of the time during a long modeling program or
when re-compiling the entire X package.

This symptom started at 2.1.85 and continues. It happens sooner on
kernels and later on others. It happens on all my systems. I'll list
them later.

2. On 2.1.96/7 the system will hang *hard* during a tape backup to
the SCSI tapes. This also happens 100% of the time on the units with
tape drives. (Also doesn't matter whether the drive being backed up
is local or on another machine on the net. All tapes are on
BusLogic BT930 controllers of various vintages. I did move one to
my remaining Adaptec controller but it does the same thing but much
further into the tape.

As noted, this symptom began, (I think) at 2.1.96 but I'll have to
verify this as most backups have been made on a non-intel machine over
the net since 2.1.88. I did a restore of about 200M of files on this
machine under 2.1.95 without incident.

This machine:
Tyan Tomcat IV with dual p200's, 128M dram 512K cache.
BT930 SCSI with 4 disks, tape, and CDROM
ATI Mach64 PCI video card.
3COM 3c595 PCI NIC.
3COM 3c509B ISA NIC.
SB16 sound card.

Other Linux machine:
Tyan Tomcat III with dual P166's, 64M DRAM, 512K cache.
AHA-2940 SCSI with 2 disks, and CDROM.
ATI Mach 64 PCI video.
3COM 3c509B NIC
SB16 sound card.

Last Linux machine:
ASUS MB with 64M DRAM dual P166's
BT930 SCSI with 1 disk, tape, and 1 CDROM
TSENG labs PCI video card.
Intel PCI nic.

There are others scattered over the area but these are right here.
All others have various hardware but most are running 2.1.83 as they
all show this (#1 above) problem.


>
> it might be that i have accidentally overlooked some bug report, please
> resend in such cases, there we quite many SMP fixes in recent kernels and
> 2.1.97+this_patch is supposed to work in 100% of the cases.

Alas, it does not.

I'll be happy to provide any other info you require. I've been keeping
Linus up to date with the initial problem. Haven't told him about #2 yet
as it just came to light last night. I'll send him a copy of this.

-bb

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Bill Broadhurst | Independent contract Engineer.
(619)296-3710 | BIOS, Firmware, & Diagnostics.
bbroad@CX492564-a.dt1.sdca.home.com | Finger for PGP 5.0 public key.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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