OS Fails to Load

OS Fails to Load

[Brad Tilley]

Hello,

50% of the time when I boot RH Linux 9 (2.4.20-18.9) the OS fails to load. The
failure usually occurs during a period of intense disk activity such as
'finding module dependencies' or 'mounting local filesystems'. I can reproduce
this error with the most recent RH kernel and the kernel that the distro
originally shipped with and 2.4.21 from Kernel.org built using RH's config
files. Usually after 4-5 power cycles, the OS loads OK and the machine runs
fine once it gets going.

It's a HP xw4100 with these specs:

P4 Processor 3.00GHz/800 FSB
1.5GB DDR/400 ECC (2x512, 2x256)
NVIDIA Quadro4 200NVS 64MB AGP
Ultra320 SCSI Controller
18GB Ultra 320 SCSI 15,000rpm Hard Drive (sda)
146GB Ultra 320 SCSI 10,000rpm Hard Drive (sdb)
48X DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
48X CD-RW Drive
Broadcom Gbit 10/100/1000

Can someone help me troubleshoot this? I'm at the end of my rope. I have the
most recent BIOS from HP.


Thanks,
Brad

Re: OS Fails to Load

[root]

> 
> Hello,
> 
> 50% of the time when I boot RH Linux 9 (2.4.20-18.9) the OS fails to load. The
> failure usually occurs during a period of intense disk activity such as
> 'finding module dependencies' or 'mounting local filesystems'. I can reproduce
> this error with the most recent RH kernel and the kernel that the distro
> originally shipped with and 2.4.21 from Kernel.org built using RH's config
> files. Usually after 4-5 power cycles, the OS loads OK and the machine runs
> fine once it gets going.

Fails? 
Monkeys flying out of the disk drive, an oops, ...?

Re: OS Fails to Load

[Herbert Poetzl]

Hi Brad!

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 04:11:06PM -0400, Brad Tilley wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 50% of the time when I boot RH Linux 9 (2.4.20-18.9) the OS fails to load. The
> failure usually occurs during a period of intense disk activity such as
> 'finding module dependencies' or 'mounting local filesystems'. I can reproduce
> this error with the most recent RH kernel and the kernel that the distro
> originally shipped with and 2.4.21 from Kernel.org built using RH's config
> files. Usually after 4-5 power cycles, the OS loads OK and the machine runs
> fine once it gets going.

I've seen this happen on MDK 8.2 and MDK 9.1 with or
without custom kernel from 2.4.19 - 2.4.20 ...

it seemed to me to be VM related (swapper) but I had no 
time to take a closer look at it ...

you will find many voodoo answers on the net, how this
was cured (like disable usb, change hd, etc ...) but I 
guess this is some kind of VM deadlock, which can be 
triggered by any memory consuming task activated before 
swap is enabled ...

> It's a HP xw4100 with these specs:
> 
> P4 Processor 3.00GHz/800 FSB
> 1.5GB DDR/400 ECC (2x512, 2x256)
> NVIDIA Quadro4 200NVS 64MB AGP
> Ultra320 SCSI Controller
> 18GB Ultra 320 SCSI 15,000rpm Hard Drive (sda)
> 146GB Ultra 320 SCSI 10,000rpm Hard Drive (sdb)
> 48X DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
> 48X CD-RW Drive
> Broadcom Gbit 10/100/1000
> 
> Can someone help me troubleshoot this? I'm at the end of my rope. I have the
> most recent BIOS from HP.

maybe this has been fixed in 2.4.21-rc6 ...

Summary of changes from v2.4.21-rc5 to v2.4.21-rc6
============================================
Andrew Morton <akpm@digeo.com>:
  o Fix IO stalls and deadlocks

if not, you could try to activate magic sys-req and 
dump the current kernel state, or even better, attach
the debugger and have a look whats going on ... 

HTH,
Herbert

> Thanks,
> Brad
> 
> 
> 
> 
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