[plug] Linux

[Grahame Bowland]

On Mon, 2001-11-26 at 17:08, Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jason Belcher wrote:
> > Nathan Alberti wrote:
> > >"Unable to handle kernel paging request" just means that there was a
> > >page fault that the kernel didn't know what to do with.  That's
> > >usually caused by referencing a bad pointer.  
> > And this can bring down the entire system?
> 
> When it happens in the kernel, yes.

It's usually just a sign that something has gone wrong in the code. It
could be anything at all though. At the software level check if you're
using any patches that aren't considered stable, I've seen random death
when using the ppp-mppe patches on a SMP system, turned out the patches
weren't SMP safe.

It could also be the RAM in the machine. One box we got from a vendor
was delivered intact. After installing Linux we noticed lots of SCSI
errors, which would often go away after the system retryed. Apply
termination, change cables, call vendor, replace motherboard + disks +
scsi cables again. I then tried a memory tester, turned out the whole
thing was just the memory.

Said vendor was most impressed with the memory tester, although I've
personally used them since 1990.

-- 
Grahame Bowland                      Email: grahame at ucs.uwa.edu.au
University Communications Services   Phone: +61 8 9380 1175
The University of Western Australia    Fax: +61 8 9380 1109