Hi! With my currently installed ping (netkit-ping 0.10-6 from Debian Woody) I get unaligned accesses: ping(15953): unaligned trap at 00000001200030e4: 0000000120026b34 29 1 ping(15953): unaligned trap at 0000000120003110: 0000000120026b2c 29 2 The worse part is: they seem to be handled The Wrong Way: [jbglaw@air:/home/jbglaw] $> ping -c 1 localhost PING localhost (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=13.8 ms wrong data byte #8 should be 0x8 but was 0xdc c d e f 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1a 1b 1c 1d 1e 1f 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 2a 2b 2c 2d 2e 2f 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --- localhost ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 13.8/13.8/13.8 ms This is on a NoName Alpha box, running 2.4.0-test8-pre1 (with very good uptimes), but I think 2.4.2-pre2 would do the same (wrong) things as arch/alpha/kernel/traps.c wasn't really changed since ages... I don't know much about alpha assemlbly language so somebody else should have a look at that;( Btw., when such an unaligned trap has happened, I also get transmit timeouts on my network card (which is: 00:0c.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905 100BaseTX [Boomerang] NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e000. Flags; bus-master 1, full 1; dirty 1470429(13) current 1470445(13). Transmit list 477a42d0 vs. fffffc00077a42d0. 0: @fffffc00077a4200 length 80000042 status 00000042 ... MfG, JBG -- Fehler eingestehen, Größe zeigen: Nehmt die Rechtschreibreform zurück!!! /* Jan-Benedict Glaw -- +49-177-5601720 */ keyID=0x8399E1BB fingerprint=250D 3BCF 7127 0D8C A444 A961 1DBD 5E75 8399 E1BB "insmod vi.o and there we go..." (Alexander Viro on linux-kernel)