[rhelv6-list] A kernel bug that causes a system crash when the uptime is longer than 208.5 days

[Akemi Yagi]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 8:42 AM, Farkas Levente <lfarkas at lfarkas.org> wrote:
> On 01/06/2012 05:18 PM, Akemi Yagi wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> There is a kernel bug that causes a system crash when the uptime goes
>> over 208.5 days. According to available info, the patch [1] is now in
>> kernel 3.1.5. RHEL 6 is apparently affected (timer.h has the buggy
>> code). I was not able to find a bug report at bugzilla.redhat.com that
>> is seemingly related to this bug but my search is not extensive.
>>
>> Is there anyone running the RHEL-6 system long enough to see this bug?
>
> 2.6.32-71.24.1.el6.x86_64
> # uptime
>  17:40:32 up 219 days, 20:29,  1 user,  load average: 1.36, 0.57, 0.46
>
> what's the problem?

According to the info I have seen, not all systems will see the bug.
For example, due to the nature of the bug, virtual machines are not
affected. I also read that only the Intel CPU (Pentium4 or newer) is
relevant.

By the way why 208.5 days?

2^54 / ( 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 ) = 208.499983 days

Akemi