Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

[Mark Carey]

8.04 LTS hardy server AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+ on a Gigabyte 7VAX Motherboard, running md (raid1) of /home exported via nfs and samba, iptables, cups printer etc. Crash is only noticed on an nfs client machine when everything freezes.

nothing in dmesg or kern.log

careys@jersey:~$ uname -a
Linux jersey 2.6.24-22-server #1 SMP Mon Nov 24 19:14:19 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Linux kernel image for version 2.6.24 on x86
ii linux-image-2.6.24-22-server 2.6.24-22.45

Output on tty0 as transcribed from photo - will upload photo

 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: **** GS: 000 SS: 068
Process swapper (pid: 0, ti=c0436000 tasnk=c04033a0 task.ti=c0436000)
Stack: 000037da 32a9f2c1 c1809120 00000000 c049b300 c0149b03 00000000 00000000
       00000009 c180a184 c014f7e7 00989680 00000000 00000000 c180a180 00000096
       00000000 c1809120 00000000 c049b300 00000000 c011c7f0 00000001 00000086
Call Trace:
 [<c0149b03>] hrtimer_interrupt+0x53/0x1f0
 [<c014f7e7>] tick_do_update_jiffies64+0xa7/0x110
 [<c011c7f0>] smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x50/0x80
 [<c0108eac>] apic_timer_interrupt+0x28/0x30
 [<c0106f40>] default_idle+0x0/0x60
 [<c0122f62>] native_safe_halt+0x2/0x10
 [<c0106f7c>] default_idle+0x3c/0x60
 [<c01066c3>] cpu_idle+0x73/0xd0
 [<c043ca8f>] start_kernel+0x31f/0x3b0
 [<c043c150>] unknown_bootoption+0x0/0x1f0
 =======================
Code: Bad EIP value.
EIP [<00000000>] 0x0 SS:ESP 0068:c0437f14
Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

This is the same machine as I see bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mdadm/+bug/108553 (mdadm segfaults on startup) on.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Would it be possible for you to test the newer Intrepid ibex 8.10 release which has a 2.6.27 based kernel?

[Mark Carey (careym)]

Left the machine on over night, with no nfs clients attached came back to it in the morning and have a very similar crash, see attached photo.

Process swapper (pid: 0, ti=c0436000 task=c04033a0 task.ti=c0436000)
Stack: 00005583 13ab50c0 c1809120 00000000 c049b300 c0149b03 00000000 00000000
       00000015 c180a184 c014f7e7 00989680 00000000 00000000 c180a180 00000096
       00000000 c1809120 00000000 c049b300 00000000 c011c7f0 00000001 00000086
Call Trace:
 [<c0149b03>] hrtimer_interrupt+0x53/0x1f0
 [<c014f7e7>] tick_do_update_jiffies64+0xa7/0x110
 [<c011c7f0>] smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x50/0x80
 [<c0149868>] ktime_get+0x18/0x40
 [<c0108eac>] apic_timer_interrupt+0x28/0x30
 [<c0106f40>] default_idle+0x0/0x60
 [<c0122f62>] native_safe_halt+0x2/0x10
 [<c0106f7c>] default_idle+0x3c/0x60
 [<c01066c3>] cpu_idle+0x73/0xd0
 [<c043ca8f>] start_kernel+0x31f/0x3b0
 [<c043c150>] unknown_bootoption+0x0/0x1f0
 =======================
Code: Bad EIP value.
EIP [<00000000>] 0x0 SS:ESP 0068:c0437f14
Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt

Same process slightly different call trace (this time includes ktime_get)

[Mark Carey (careym)]

Leann thank you for your comment 2 this machine is supposed to be a production machine (hence the reason it is running LTS) so taking offline to rebuild is problematic (admittedly kernel multiple kernel panics dont do much for uptime), is there a specific feature in the 2.6.27 kernel which you think may help?

[Mark Carey (careym)]

Have installed 8.10 server.

Removed the 13GB Quantum ATA33 drive (Primary Master) and replaced with a ATA133 drive so both primary and secondary IDE channels now run at ATA100, rather than one at ATA33 and the other at ATA100,

Have also changed the filesystem on the raid1 from xfs to ext3.

Reailistically too much has changed to be able to call this process scientific, and credit any disappearance of the problem to the upgrade I will keep an eye out for any recurrence and report should it happen.

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

This bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding this being fixed with an update. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any future bugs you may find.