F7: Trying to figure out why kernel crashes with journal commit I/O error

[Gilbert Sebenste]

Hello all,

I am having an absolutely vexing problem that maybe somebody might shed 
some light on.

I just got 2 new computers, both running F7. They each have one Seagate 
750 GB SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 16 MB drive. Each machine has 4 GB of RAM, 
Core 2 quad 6700 motherboard from ASUS.

OK. I run the computers pretty hard. But I have two Pentium 4's who work 
just as hard, all getting a 20 MB/sec peak (1 MB/sec avg) weather feed 
from the National Weather Service, flawlessly for months until I install 
new kernels on it and reboot.

OK, within 12 hours after startup of the new machine running identical 
software that the other slower machines are running with the exact same 
data feed, I get

kernel: journal commit I/O error

I can log in, but can't do commands. A manual power-down (shutdown -r now 
won't work) and reboot clears it fine.

First I suspected a hard drive error on both machines. But then
replacement hard drives came in. It seemed to stop the problem for a 
few days, so I closed a bugzilla I had. Nope, this weekend, it went back 
to crashing every 4-18 hours.

I tried to cut the read-writes in half, to no effect, by reducing the
amount of data/files coming in.

I have:

Replaced the hard drive 3 times with new ones (to no avail)

Reduced the read/writes by around half

Turned off legacy USB support, which also caused my keyboard and mouse to 
stop working with errors (that's been cleared and is OK)

Filed a bugzilla: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=318661

Tonight, I tried using the original kernel that came with F7
(2.6.21-1.3194.fc7) instead of the latest (2.6.22.9-91.fc-7).
As of two hours into this, so far so good, but I'm not confident.

Two other machines, Pentium 4's at 3 GHZ with ASUS motherboards, purr like 
a kitten.

Has anyone seen anything like this, or know what could be the problem?

As always, grateful for any help, and thanks for reading this!

Gilbert

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Gilbert Sebenste                                                     ********
(My opinions only!)                                                  ******
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