From: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
Message-Id: <200011161120.eAGBKUm08641@flint.arm.linux.org.uk>
Subject: Re: 2.4. continues after Aieee...
To: R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl (Rogier Wolff)
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 11:20:30 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: dennis@etinc.com (Dennis), linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <200011151630.RAA04141@cave.bitwizard.nl> from "Rogier Wolff" at Nov 15, 2000 05:30:29 PM
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

Rogier Wolff wrote:
> Dennis wrote:
> > network card driver) and leave the system running make linux unusable in
> > unattended environments as the machine is functionally dead.
> 
> Which doesn't help in this case, as your network card COULD be dead,
> while the system simply hasn't crashed....

Not every case causes a panic either.  This week, I had an instance of
an i686 box lock solid with a DFE-530TX net card.  Rebooting/power
cycling it didn't recover it (despite it working for the past month
without any problems).  It only started working again after I moved
it into a different PCI slot.

I've seen a couple of instances now on totally different hardware where
it is possible to lock a PCI bus solid by improper connections on some
of the PCI bus lines, so a faulty PCI socket seem to be the most likely
cause.

In this case, a "panic" doesn't help you; the machine experiances a
hardware lockup.  To catch these, you'd need a hardware watchdog.

What I'm basically saying is that there is only a limited amount that
Linux (or any OS) can do against these types of hardware failure.  If
you need better protection, try a hardware with user-space policy
implementations.
   _____
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  |   |         Russell King        rmk@arm.linux.org.uk      --- ---
  | | | | http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html   /  /  |
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  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
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