Tags Tags

WTF did I do wrong?

August 17th, 2011 - 09:29 pm ET by root | Report spam
Help Create a new topic
Over the past few days I assembled a new machine and
installed 13.37 on it. The processor is an i7-2600
and I have 16Gb of memory. Immediately after installing
13.37 I rebuilt the kernel:
make clean
make oldconfig
make menuconfig
..
make modules
make modules_install
make bzImage

In menuconfig I changed the -smp version thing.
I changed the processor type to core2/xeon
I changed to 64Gb memory
I turned off the penguins logo
and I increased the log-shift thing to 18
for a bigger syslog file.

Running on the new kernel I started getting segfaults
on trivial stuff, no chance for a segfault. For example
I got a segfault when executing exit in a bash script.

When I first got a segfault I spent several hours trying
to track it down without success. After that segfaults
started popping up all over the place.

So I went back to the original vmlinuz and all the segfaults
have gone away. I was ready to dump 13.37 and go back to
13.1, but the problem seems to be my kernel and not 13.37.

Please, any ideas?
TIA
email Follow the discussionReplies 20 repliesReplies Make a reply

Similar topics

Replies

#1 D Herring
August 17th, 2011 - 10:57 pm ET | Report spam
On 08/17/2011 09:29 PM, root wrote:
make clean
make oldconfig
make menuconfig
..
make modules
make modules_install
make bzImage

In menuconfig I changed the -smp version thing.
I changed the processor type to core2/xeon
I changed to 64Gb memory
I turned off the penguins logo
and I increased the log-shift thing to 18
for a bigger syslog file.

Running on the new kernel I started getting segfaults
on trivial stuff, no chance for a segfault. For example
I got a segfault when executing exit in a bash script.


...
Please, any ideas?



Anything useful in the system logs?
Barring that, I'd try bisecting the problem. Check that the kernel
versions didn't change. Check that System.map didn't change. Only
tweak one thing at a time between kernel builds. etc.

- Daniel
Replies Reply to this message
#2 root
August 17th, 2011 - 11:09 pm ET | Report spam
D Herring wrote:
On 08/17/2011 09:29 PM, root wrote:
make clean
make oldconfig
make menuconfig
..
make modules
make modules_install
make bzImage

In menuconfig I changed the -smp version thing.
I changed the processor type to core2/xeon
I changed to 64Gb memory
I turned off the penguins logo
and I increased the log-shift thing to 18
for a bigger syslog file.

Running on the new kernel I started getting segfaults
on trivial stuff, no chance for a segfault. For example
I got a segfault when executing exit in a bash script.


...
Please, any ideas?



Anything useful in the system logs?
Barring that, I'd try bisecting the problem. Check that the kernel
versions didn't change. Check that System.map didn't change. Only
tweak one thing at a time between kernel builds. etc.

- Daniel



Thanks for responding. I changed the memory limit to 4Gb and
the segfault problem *seems* to have gone away. Now the
problem is to figure out why I can't use the whole 16Gb.
Replies Reply to this message
#3 Henrik Carlqvist
August 18th, 2011 - 01:46 am ET | Report spam
root wrote:
I changed the memory limit to 4Gb and the segfault problem *seems* to
have gone away. Now the problem is to figure out why I can't use the
whole 16Gb.



If so, you problem could be that you are mixing a kernel with PAE support
with modules that only support 4 GB. When it comes to SMP and supported
memory size on a 32-bit system it is important that all loaded modules
were configured in the same way as the kernel.

On the other hand, why bother with PAE? Why not simply install Slackware64
instead?

regards Henrik
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc123(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:

Replies Reply to this message
#4 geep
August 18th, 2011 - 09:17 am ET | Report spam
On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:29:47 +0000, root wrote:

Over the past few days I assembled a new machine and installed 13.37 on
it. The processor is an i7-2600 and I have 16Gb of memory. Immediately
after installing 13.37 I rebuilt the kernel:
make clean
make oldconfig
make menuconfig
..
make modules
make modules_install
make bzImage

In menuconfig I changed the -smp version thing. I changed the processor
type to core2/xeon I changed to 64Gb memory
I turned off the penguins logo
and I increased the log-shift thing to 18
for a bigger syslog file.

Running on the new kernel I started getting segfaults on trivial stuff,
no chance for a segfault. For example I got a segfault when executing
exit in a bash script.

When I first got a segfault I spent several hours trying to track it
down without success. After that segfaults started popping up all over
the place.

So I went back to the original vmlinuz and all the segfaults have gone
away. I was ready to dump 13.37 and go back to 13.1, but the problem
seems to be my kernel and not 13.37.

Please, any ideas?
TIA


Maybe check that the RAM is all OK - like with memtest86+.
I've used it from Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) with good results at detecting
flaky memory.

Cheers,
Peter
Replies Reply to this message
#5 root
August 18th, 2011 - 12:12 pm ET | Report spam
Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
root wrote:
I changed the memory limit to 4Gb and the segfault problem *seems* to
have gone away. Now the problem is to figure out why I can't use the
whole 16Gb.



If so, you problem could be that you are mixing a kernel with PAE support
with modules that only support 4 GB. When it comes to SMP and supported
memory size on a 32-bit system it is important that all loaded modules
were configured in the same way as the kernel.

On the other hand, why bother with PAE? Why not simply install Slackware64
instead?

regards Henrik



Thanks Henrik. I will take a look at Slack64, maybe not for me
but for my wife who has the same machine as I.

As for the modules, I built the kernel and modules cleanly from
the same config file.
Replies Reply to this message
Help Create a new topicNext page Replies Make a reply
Search Make your own search