Re: "Unable to handle kernel paging request"

[abel bfr co il (Alexander L. Belikoff)]

Bob McElrath <mcelrath@draal.physics.wisc.edu> writes:

> On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Neil Carlson wrote:
> 
> > Anybody know anything about the following error messages
> > that I'm finding in /var/log/messages:
> > 
> > Dec 14 15:46:11 noether kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 00000000057d1acd
> > Dec 14 15:46:11 noether kernel: kswapd(3): Oops 0
> > [9 lines of register dumps deleted]
> > 
> > This has happened to me 4 or 5 times over the last  4 months,
> > and it usually leaves my system in a mostly unusable state.
> 
> This basically means your kernel crashed.  What kernel version are you
> running?  Consider upgrading to 2.0.36 or the latest of the 2.1 series.
> 


Hello Bob,

I'm running a number of LX164 Alphas over here with PVM software and
the systems are doing really bad... For historical reasons, I've got
to stick to Redhat 4.2 and the kernel we are using is a heavily
patched 2.0.30 (provided by RedHat plus a number of ancient patches).
Besides, the total memory footprint of all programs running is much
bigger than the RAM size (128 Mb), so the systems swap heavily (swap
size is 128 Mb as well). In general, the systems behave quite badly
with various kinds of bizarre effects, like network outages (Tulip
cards/driver), etc.

I just wanted to ask you about that 2.0.36 kernel suggestion above. Is
there any reason to stick to precisely .36 and not to try anything
slightly older (like .35)? The reason is, that I've found a properly
patched 2.0.35 kernel for the Alpha on ftp.digital.com and it compiles
cleanly on my machines. yet I had some problems compiling the stock
2.0.36.

PS. I compiled the kernels as a regular user in my private directory.
However, they addressed the ancient /usr/src/linux for include files,
which, I believe, is a 2.0.30 kernel, properly patched for glibc v1.
support.

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Alexander L. Belikoff
Bloomberg L.P. / BFM Financial Research Ltd.
abel@vallinor4.com, abel@bfr.co.il