Re: Stable Alpha on 2.2? How do we build a stable install?

[Eric Bohm <bohm gate csgeeks org>]

>>>>> "Andreas" == krebs  <krebs@qkal.sap-ag.de> writes:

    Dave> Definitly steer clear of 2.2.9 and I suspect 2.2.10; they
    Dave> have a wierd memory corruption bug.  2.2.7 seems fine for
    Dave> me.  It may be eating RAM somewhere but I'd kind of presumed
    Dave> it was just disappearing into buffers and caching.

    Andreas> i'm running 2.2.9 (without any acs) now for quite some
    Andreas> time (43 days uptime) on my alphastation 200 4/233
    Andreas> (avanti) with 128MB and RH6.0 (fresh install with no
    Andreas> updates, except a new version of nmh) and it's working
    Andreas> great. if there is a memory leak it's not large (no more
    Andreas> than 10MB by a quick look at top).

Even under 2.2.7 I end up with apparently absurd memory use.

 9:57am  up 11:18,  3 users,  load average: 0.05, 0.02, 0.00
47 processes: 45 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  1.8% user,  2.0% system,  0.0% nice, 96.0% idle
Mem:  192232K av, 186472K used,   5760K free,  69008K shrd,  39168K buff
Swap: 170256K av,   2760K used, 167496K free                 91424K cached

The situation does look better under 2.2.7 than the other kernels.

    Andreas> /proc/version contains the following info about my
    Andreas> system: Linux version 2.2.9 (root@storm.qkal.sap-ag.de)
    Andreas> (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2
    Andreas> release)) #2 Mon May 17 12:28:21 CEST 1999

    Andreas> so maybe it depends on the system you run it on?

Perhaps.  For the record I'm running:

Linux version 2.2.7 (root@balrog.csgeeks.org) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #9 Tue Jun 29 22:36:06 EDT 1999

cat /proc/cpuinfo
cpu                     : Alpha
cpu model               : EV56
cpu variation           : 0
cpu revision            : 0
cpu serial number       : Linux_is_Great!
system type             : EB164
system variation        : LX164
system revision         : 0
system serial number    : MILO-2.0.35-c5.
cycle frequency [Hz]    : 599809824 est.
timer frequency [Hz]    : 1024.00
page size [bytes]       : 8192
phys. address bits      : 40
max. addr. space #      : 127
BogoMIPS                : 595.59
kernel unaligned acc    : 0 (pc=0,va=0)
user unaligned acc      : 130 (pc=20000ac8d60,va=1203ec97a)
platform string         : N/A


    Dave> Arghh! - yes - this is driving me nuts (even on 2.2.7)! On
    Dave> my system it almost always happens when I close a window
    Dave> (not every time otherwise I really would be mad!). (Matrox
    Dave> Millenium 2 with 4MB running in 8bpp mode with Enlightenment
    Dave> and Gnome on top)

It is extremely difficult to get work done when your session gets cut
out from under you.

    Andreas> that's the great thing about 2.2.9 on my machine. the
    Andreas> xserver doesn't crash any more :-) (Matrox Millenium 2
    Andreas> with 8MB running in 1600x1200x16 with Enlightenment and
    Andreas> Gnome). the xserver is now also running for 43 days.

Matrox Millenium 2 with 4 MB running in 16bpp at 1600x1200x16.  X will
usually last me  3-6 hours depending on usage.  For reasons which I
haven't pinned down, gnome-terminal and mozilla seem to  contribute
to bad behavior.  Switching to rxvt seems to have increased the mean
uptime by a few hours. 

For the record, my X use is mostly confined to rxvt, emacs, mozilla,
applix with occasional xawtv and gqview use.  The X crashes seem to
occur with any combination of those apps in use.

Anyone tried playing with the framebuffer stuff?  I'm afraid to mess
with it under these conditions.

    Dave> That is what I see from the wierd memory corruption problems
    Dave> of 2.2.9 - going back to 2.2.7 has cured this.

2.2.7 is better.  X crashes very rarely by comparison to 2.2.10.

The d-asn-2.tgz for 2.2.10 recommended by Alexander didn't help me at
all.  It made things worse in one case, X crashed and all the virtual
terminals had sporadic video corruptions.