system freezes upon handling large files

[pveurs]

When using kernels 2.8.28-13 and 2.6.28-14 I quite often (at least every other day) experienced the system locking up completely. Sometimes the caps lock light would light up (kernel panic?) and nothing would work anymore; not even Alt+SysRq+REISUB.

I noticed that this did not happen anymore when 2.6.28-15 came out and the system worked completely fine for over a month until I downloaded 2.6.28-16. (It did crash once but I'm not entirely sure which kernel version I used at that moment..could have been the -14 or the -15 one.)

A couple days ago I received an update to 2.6.28-16 and within two days I had two hard lockups again.

I'm not sure, but I'm suspecting it has something to do with handling large files: I haven't exactly kept track of every instance it happened, but there are a few things that have definately made the system crash:
1) Torrenting, especially when I downloaded a torrent containing 2.1 GB files.
2) File transfer over my home network (SAMBA)
3) Copying to an external HDD

What also may have something to do with the freezing is the usage of an NTFS-partition for media files. I used to download my torrents to an NTFS-partition, resulting in regular freezing, but when I switched to Ext3 the frequency of the freezing went down like 90% (but it did not disappear entirely).

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=0b479c44-e4bf-4fcd-ac48-6aadf2ff339a
MachineType: Hewlett-Packard HP EliteBook 8530w
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: linux-image-2.6.28-15-generic 2.6.28-15.52
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=64db1e05-556a-418c-80cb-64f89694b286 ro hpet=disable
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-15.52-generic
SourcePackage: linux

[pveurs (pveurshout)]

NOTE: I'm back to 2.6.28-15 again and it seems to work fine with that version (for 2 days now).

Additional information (let me know if anything's missing):
HP EliteBook 8530w
Intel Core 2 Duo T9600
4GB DDR2 RAM
Intel WiFi Link 5300 wireless card
nVidia Quadro FX 770M graphics
Jaunty 64-bit, entirely up to date (except for the use of the 2.6.28-15 kernel atm)

[Rich Wales (richw)]

I, too, have had several crashes on a 9.04 server (32-bit) running the 2.6.28-16 kernel. I've gone back to 2.6.28-15; too early so far to tell whether this will fix the problem.

There have been other recent reports from people having crashes with 2.6.28-16; see, for example, the tail end of the following discussion:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=b6dc603e4e59a197d29be963f392773c&t=1135055&highlight=freeze&page=71

If I continue to get crashes running 2.6.28-15, I'll have to modify my hardware setup in order to get more info; unfortunately, the crash generates a long kernel backtrace, and the crucial details about the crash end up scrolling off the server's console.

[Rich Wales (richw)]

My problem may not have been a 2.6.28-16 kernel problem after all. I had another crash after going back to 2.6.28-15 (!!); then, I went into the BIOS setup options and lowered the RAM speed, booted up with 2.6.28-16, and the machine has been running stably for the past three days.

This doesn't mean there aren't any problems with 2.6.28-16, of course -- only that my problem is most likely not due to this kernel version.

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi pveurs,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 462729

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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