Kernel Crash- DL380G3-linux 7.3

[ryan_143]

Hi,

I have a server that goes down twice a week from a server panic in Linux 7.3 kernel 2.4.18-3smp. I've attached an image of the crash. Can anyone tell me what I could to do to correct this? Appreciate any help in this matter...

Ryan

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

I'd try to install a newer kernel and see if this problem persists.
Try to download the RPM of newer smp kernel
and to install it with rpm -ivh kernelversion

Best regards...

[Mark Grant]

This seems to be an error in the kernel filesystem journaling routines. If the error really is in commit.c as is suggested, then this is in the code to commit to the log in the ext3 filesystem. You may have a marginally corrupt fileystem.

This obviously shouldn't happen. If you need a quick fix, either upgrade, re-create your ext3 filesystem or try a different fileystem type e.g reiserfs.

However, you should really download a vanilla Linus Torvalds kernel and try and re-produce the error. If you can, you should submit a bug report to the linux kernel mailing list or direct to Stephen Tweedie.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

2.4.20 is a little more stable, fixes some bugs.

Upgrading to that has improved my reliability on my 7.3 box.

SEP

[ryan_143]

Do appreciate all the feedback... and we were going to upgrade the kernel initially but the kernel version that hp drivers support is the kernel that I have installed under 7.3 and hp support has verified this. The problem is that if by upgrading the kernel to a more stable one, i might run or inherit more problems due to that hp has not tested their drivers under a newer kernel. Is it safe to upgrade to a kernel that hp drivers have not been tested on? Are your experiences more positive than negative in this matter? Thanks again for all your answers...

Ryan

[Mark Grant]

Ryan, Generally speaking, upgrading a single point release, for example from 2.4.18 to 2.4.19 will have no significant issues for user space applications. This is why most application vendors say they will support Linux 2.2 or 2.4 as the interfaces won't change significantly. However, for drivers, the situation may be completely different. If they are open source drivers, or you at least have the source code, you would re-compile them after your upgrade and they will almost certainly work. Binary drivers probably won't work though, they might, but probably won't. If you have a driver that will recompile when built then the upgrade is a good thing for you to try. It's probably this driver that is causing you the trouble in the first place. If you have a binary only driver then you need to tread carefully and push HP to supply a driver for a more recent version of the kernel. In the meantime, see if you can find any patterns in your machine failures and perhaps re-create your ext3 filesystems or, as I mentioned above, change to reiserfs (it's faster on SMP systems anyway)