RE: Unable to load interpreter ???

[Stig Telfer <stig alpha-processor com>]

I have seen this behaviour before.  If you have sustained heavy paging, your
system's virtual memory completely runs out and then is reclaimed back to
sensible amounts, in continuous oscillations.  You can watch this happen,
although tools like vmstat and top don't last for more than a couple of
hours under these extreme circumstances (I had a nice graph somewhere of vm
cycles on what should have been a steady-state overnight test).  Attempting
to run a shell when vm is near exhaustion produces the 'unable to load
interpreter' message.

The kernel was the patched 2.0.35 (may have also happened on 2.1.122, can't
remember).  The machines - LX and UX boards (don't have anything else to
test).

Regards,
Stig Telfer
Alpha Processor Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Wagner [mailto:matt.c.wagner@uwrf.edu]
> Sent: Monday, November 30, 1998 6:13 AM
> To: axp-list@redhat.com
> Subject: Re: Unable to load interpreter ???
> 
> 
> we usually get that error on i386 machines when the machines have
> exhausted all their memory... :)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 30 Nov 1998, Stefan Boresch wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone know what this message indicates (this is the full
> > printout from the syslog:
> > 
> > Nov 30 11:09:44 gamma kernel: Unable to load interpreter
> > 
> > I am suddenly getting these messages on two LX machines 
> under medium to
> > high load.  One of the machines just had some hardware trouble, so
> > I'd be willing to accept that there is still something 
> going on there,
> > but the other machine was extremely stable and NOTHING was changed
> > hard- or softwarewise.  As soon as one gets these messages, every
> > program one attempts to start segfaults; pretty soon one has to
> > hit the reboot button.
> > 
> > These machines are running RH 5.1 with pretty much all 
> patches applied,
> > milo is the RH 5.1 one, the kernel is 2.0.35 compiled from the
> > Redhat sources.  (I am willing to compile a kernel from 
> pristine sources,
> > but note that this kernel worked fine for the last months.)
> > 
> > A simple test to reproduce my problem is the memory tester which
> > Dave Gilbert posted to this group a while ago, it runs fine (no bad
> > memory is reported, but after an hour these messages start 
> to appear)
> > 
> > I should add that both machines have Adaptec SCSI adapters (one an
> > 2940U, the other the 2940UW), and our real applications do a lot of
> > heavy duty disk I/O.  I have had no problems with these; on 
> the other
> > hand, several people seem to have had problems with 2.0.35 and the
> > Adaptec driver.  So, I'd also appreciate if people would comment on
> > which combination (kernel, Adaptec driver version, 
> alpha-patches runs
> > well for them).
> > 
> > Many thanks,
> > 
> > Stefan Boresch
> > 
> > -- 
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> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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