Kernel panic at intermittent times

[Andrew Sawyer]

Computer freezes completely (although screen is still vieable). Have to turn off with power button or reset button as nothing works. I cannot establish any particular program that is causing this. I stopped gdm and ran 'top', then ssh'd in from another pc while computer was running. It crashed after a couple of minutes. Going back to the computer to view the screen showed the following (only the last few lines printed due to no ability to cut/paste):

Code:

[ 334.940539] <ffffffff8010fede>{system_call+126}
[ 334.945777]
[ 334.945778] Code: 41 8b 44 24 10 25 ff 7f 00 00 89 44 24 0c 8b 53 10 81 e2 ff
[ 334.954392] RIP <ffffffff88156ecf>{:ath_hal:zz0e373a4d+125} RSP <ffff81007753f978>
[ 334.960178] CR2: 0000000000000010
[ 334.963002] <0>Kernel panic - not syncing: Aiee, killing interrupt handler!

There is a thread I have created on this at ubuntuforums: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=133958
If there is any other information that I can give you, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Edit: Sorry - running Dapper Flight 4 fully Dist-upgraded as of 22nd Feb (EST)

[ShamrockUK (uplift)]

Confirmed here. Pretty much the exact same symptoms, except that the keyboard always locks (regardless of whether plugged direct into a USB port or through a PS2 converter) to the point where even the numlock key won't work. The mouse sometimes still works however and it's occasionally possible to Alt+SysReq+B, even though no other keys appear to be working.

[Jonathan Austin (mailforwho)]

I have this problem aswell!
I haven't been uble to do very much debugging but I can if I know what to do - none of the logs I looked at kept logging after the boot process had finished...
there is another forum post with several others experiencing this here
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=132758&page=1

My System:
AthlonXP 1900+
Nforce2 Ultra 400 (MSI k7N2 delta2-ilsr)
Memtest completes without errors (512mb PC2700)
GF4 MX440 graphics card
DC10+ (Zoran based) MJPEG capture card - probelm exists even if I remove this (and re-install)
SATA hdd (/, swap and /home) and IDE hdd (/boot, becuase grub didn't like the SATA drive) - Promise 20376 for the SATA disk
RT2500 wireless card (doesn't hang under breezy)
(CDRW, DVDROM)

SysReq attempts fail, no shutdown script invoked when I push the power button.

Crashed once when X woldn't start properly and I was running dpkg --configure -a on vc1and many times using Synaptic (I was trying to get the updates, hoping they would solve the problem :P

I have _never_ had the mouse continue working and no matter how many skinny elephants I try to raise (I.E SysReq+RSEIUB, obviously with gaps inbetween, does nothing).

I don't seem to get disk failures after crashing though

On restart logging in didn't work until I recreated my home directory (I.E created a blank one, saving the old one for anallysis - if anyone cares)

[Phil Bull (philbull)]

Thanks for the reports.

Could anyone experiencing this issue please try the following?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSystemCrash

Also, what kernels are you all running?

Thanks

[Andrew Sawyer (andy-adsawyer)]

Memtest86+ done with following results:

Athlon 64 X2 2010 MHz
L1 Cache: 128K 16478MB/s
L2 Cache: 512K 4094MB/s
Memory: 2048M 1745MB/s
Chipset: AMD 8000 (ECC : Disabled)
Settings: RAM : 167 MHz (DDR335) / CAS : 2.5-3-3-7 / Dual Channel (128 bits)

WallTime: 54 mins when 14% into 2nd pass
Cached: 2048M
RsvdMem: 276M
MemMap: e820-Std
Cache: on
ECC: off
Test: Std
Pass: 1
Errors: 0
ECC Errs:

I am using a fully dist-upgraded version of Ubuntu Daper Drake, on kernel 2.6.15-16-amd64-k8. I have kept the system fully updated as new patches come out, however the problem has yet to rectify itself.

For what it's worth, this is a new problem since upgrading to Dapper - Breezy was fine on the same system.

If I can be of any further help, please let me know.

[Andrew Sawyer (andy-adsawyer)]

I can also confirm the bug on 2.6.15-16-amd64-generic.

[Kyller Gorgonio (kyllercg)]

I also have the same problem. The system freezes completely, including mouse and keyboard, and but I still can see the screen. The intriging thing is that there is nothing on the logs.

I tryed to strace update-notifier and firefox without obtaining nothing usefull.

Also, I note that the CPU cooler starts running at maximum sped, and that makes me thing that some process is crashing the system. And finally, I can turn of the system using the power button and probably something is still operational.

uname -a

Linux kyllercg 2.6.15-16-686 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 20 17:26:04 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

I'm running a dapper installed over a breezy instalation.

[Captain Mikee (captainmikee)]

I have asimilar problem. My system freezes after about 3 minutes of idle time.

There are no messages at all around the time of the freeze.

The following combinations of settings affect the time before freezing:

acpi disabled in BIOS: 1 minutes
acpi disabled in BIOS, acpi=off: 3 minutes
acpi enabled in BIOS: 1-6 minutes, unpredictable.

I have an Empac BlasterPC, apparently sold by Tiger.

I've discovered I can keep the computer from freezing by making sure it is never idle:

perl -e '@f=<>; while(1) { sort @f}' </var/log/syslog

I've tried Hoary, Breezy, and Breezy with kernel 2.6.12-10.

[Andrew Sawyer (andy-adsawyer)]

Just upgraded to kernel 2.6.15-17-amd64-k8. Will advise if bug still present. To confirm, this bug (mine) doesn't have any bearing on idle time. I've had the computer running all night with no problem, however sometimes it dies after 15 minutes. Sometimes it dies while idle, othertimes it dies as I am moving the mouse over the screen.

[Phil Bull (philbull)]

Captain Mikee, does your processor support any sort of speed-stepping, e.g. AMD Cool'n'Quiet? If so, is there any way you can turn it off?

[Andrew Sawyer (andy-adsawyer)]

I can confirm that after upgrading to the latest kernel, I have had 1 day, 2 hours and 6 minutes of uptime. I think this is a record. Should my system crash, I will post again, else I will post on Friday to confirm problem resolved.

[Andrew Sawyer (andy-adsawyer)]

It's not Friday yet, however I can pretty safely say that I have been running happily since last post with no crashes or problems at all.

Pretty safe to say this bug is now resolved in the latest kernel release. Thank you to everyone for their help.

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

Accroding to user this is fixed.

[Carthik Sharma (carthik)]

Changing status to "Fix Released" since reporter says the problem does not persist.

Thank you for reporting this bug.

[Topper (t-harley)]

Still experiencing the same random freezes here with kernel 2.6.15-20 (SMP) on ubuntu dapper.
Many threads on ubuntuforums show a coincidence with the rt2500 wireless chipset.
Uptimes vary from few minutes to 1+ day, regardless of activity. No entry in the logs after the crash, everything locks hard.

A glimpse on serialmonkey forums (rt2500 developpment) shows that there may be incompatibility issues with rt2500 GPL driver and SMP preempt. Hope it helps.