I am at a total loss, But I have found some interesting anomalies with my
hardware.
My Current Setup:
Supermicro S370DE6 (Serverworks Chipset)
Dual PIII 866
2 x 256 MB PC133 ECC SDRAM
onboard AIC 7899 SCSI Controller.
36G,73GB Seagate Cheetah Drive.
Voodoo4 4500 AGP video,
Fore PCA 200e ATM
Problem, I have a program the can read a file(large, or small) it will then
transmit the data over atm, ethernet, localhost,or write to a file.
I have noticed that the machine will consistently crash(hard lockup) when I
do a read loop of the File. It never locks up at the same place, and I have
changed it so that it never actually does anything with the data after it
reads. Still, same result.
Things that have "fixed" the problem. Setting the FSB to 100(jumpered) will
allow me to run forever.
Also, Setting the L1 Cache to Write-through instead of write back will allow
me to run forever at 133, but the performance hit is worse than setting the
FSB to 100.
Another note. When I have attempted to compile the kernel for Uni processor.
I started getting segmentation faults with gcc.
Now this tells me it might be the processor. But I have nothing overclocked,
so I would think that it might be some kind of timing issue in the kernel.
I have two machines set up this way. One is much more stable. But I do
observe the occasional crash.(hard lockup)
I have also seen fsck crash as well. when the system was not shut down
correctly. ( as a hard lockup happens very frequently.)
Here are some things that I have tried, but Have not fixed it.
1) SMP Kernel with "noapic" at lilo prompt ( and without the noapic)
2) Uni Kernel w/ & w/out apic
I am at a total loss.
Is there anything I can do(other than run at 100 FSB)?
Nathan
P.S. I have enclosed the dmesg output for my Uniprocessor kernel
<<dmesg.out.uni>>
On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Nathan Black wrote:
> I am at a total loss, But I have found some interesting anomalies with my
> hardware.
That is about how I was feeling when I had similar problems.
> My Current Setup:
> Supermicro S370DE6 (Serverworks Chipset)
> Dual PIII 866
> 2 x 256 MB PC133 ECC SDRAM
> onboard AIC 7899 SCSI Controller.
> 36G,73GB Seagate Cheetah Drive.
> Voodoo4 4500 AGP video,
> Fore PCA 200e ATM
My setup was (is):
Tyan Thunder 2500 (Serverworks)
Dual PIII 667s
2 x 512 MB PC133 ECC SDRAM
Onboard dual SYM53C896 controller
5 18.2 GB Seagate Cheetahs
nVideo Vanta
Onboard Intel 10/100
> Problem, I have a program the can read a file(large, or small) it will then
> transmit the data over atm, ethernet, localhost,or write to a file.
I could move a lot of network traffic as long as I wasn't hitting the disk
too hard.
> I have noticed that the machine will consistently crash(hard lockup) when I
> do a read loop of the File. It never locks up at the same place, and I have
> changed it so that it never actually does anything with the data after it
> reads. Still, same result.
Any time I pushed the disk subsystem hard I would get a lockup. Sometimes
the kernel would oops, the program writing to the disk would segfault, but
always the machine locked hard.
> Things that have "fixed" the problem. Setting the FSB to 100(jumpered) will
> allow me to run forever.
> Also, Setting the L1 Cache to Write-through instead of write back will allow
> me to run forever at 133, but the performance hit is worse than setting the
> FSB to 100.
If I forced things to run slower I could run longer, like changing the
cache setting, never tried the FSB setting. But even with the machine
slowed down I could eventually lock it up if I pushed the disks hard
enough (12 bonnies at the same time would always do it).
> Another note. When I have attempted to compile the kernel for Uni processor.
> I started getting segmentation faults with gcc.
> Now this tells me it might be the processor. But I have nothing overclocked,
> so I would think that it might be some kind of timing issue in the kernel.
I saw so much strange stuff I couldn't pin it down to one thing, except
perhaps the processor.
> I have two machines set up this way. One is much more stable. But I do
> observe the occasional crash.(hard lockup)
I too had two identical machines. I was doing all my work on one, and was
planning on copying the finished product over to the second when I was
done. After I started suspecting the hardware, I started up the other
machine. It ran perfectly. I could push it as hard as I wanted with no
trouble at all.
> I have also seen fsck crash as well. when the system was not shut down
> correctly. ( as a hard lockup happens very frequently.)
>
> Here are some things that I have tried, but Have not fixed it.
> 1) SMP Kernel with "noapic" at lilo prompt ( and without the noapic)
> 2) Uni Kernel w/ & w/out apic
>
> I am at a total loss.
> Is there anything I can do(other than run at 100 FSB)?
>
> Nathan
>
> P.S. I have enclosed the dmesg output for my Uniprocessor kernel
> <<dmesg.out.uni>>
In the end I started swapping processors between the two machines. I
found the problem followed 1 of my processors. I called Intel and after 2
days of convincing they RMAed my old processor and sent me a replacement.
Both machines have been running perfectly since then. If you have any
more processors I'd try swapping them around. But since you are seeing
problems with 2 similar machines, I wouldn't get my hopes up as to this
being the solution.
-Chris
--
Two penguins were walking on an iceberg. The first penguin said to the
second, "you look like you are wearing a tuxedo." The second penguin
said, "I might be..." --David Lynch, Twin Peaks