Re: Linux SMP kernel bug with > 512M ram

[jeff@AmeriCom.com]

I don't think its chipset or memory, the machines that crash have different brand 
motherboards with different chipsets, I ran docmem for 24 hours on each stick of ram 
and found no errors. The ram worked fine in my WindowsXP machine, and it works fine 
when I use the non-smp kernel, and/or when I take the ram down to 2 sticks (512 
meg). I'm posting here because I believe I have narrowed it down to a bug in the 
kernel.

> On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:55, jeff@AmeriCom.com wrote:
> > I've been having problems with a few of our servers and I can't seem to find 
this 
> > problem mentioned anywhere else. All of the dual processor machines will not 
operate 
> > with greater than 512 megs of ram with the newer SMP kernels (2.4.7-10enterprise 
#1 
> 
> 2.4.7 is hardly "new". Red Hat has issued errata kernels going up to
> 2.4.9.
> 
> > SMP). Two of the dual P3 1ghz machines crash after a few minutes, when the 
memory 
> > usage gets high enough, I presume. The errors they spit out vary, but its only 
when 
> > I go over 512megs of ram, and only on dual processor machines. I had a slightly 
> 
> Chipset or memory hardware problems seem the most likely cause if the
> errors seem random or weird
> 
> > different problem when I tried to set it up on a dual p2 266 machine, when I go 
over 
> > 512 megs there, the system takes an hour to boot up, and everything crawls from 
> 
> Thats BIOS. Thats a well known BIOS problem where the BIOS doesnt
> configure the mtrr registers properly. You can work around that one by
> tweaking the settings by hand or probably by getting a newer BIOS 
> 
> 
>