Abend: Found Spinlock to be busy with single processor active

[Ayman Altounji]

Intermittent abend. Happens on 7 out of 30 ML530's. They only have 1 processor (Pentium III xeon 800MHz). Have 2 spinlock abends followed by Abend: Kernel detected thread going to sleep when it was not allowed. TID's found mention 3rd party nlm's (such as audit) but these are not loaded. Fourth abend follows (usually ethertsm). NIC and drivers and config are OK. Any ideas?

[Ayman Altounji]

Try updating the NIC driver and associate drivers from the latest NSSD .
Update NWPA.NLM .

[Ayman Altounji]

They are running NSSD 6.00a. Although the latest NSSD is 6.10a, I have checked the files in question. We are running the latest nwpa.nlm (3.06), ethertsm.nlm (3.81) and n100.lan (5.70).The only later file I can find in the NSSD610a is cpqscsi.ham - 1.42 to our 1.41. Can this be relevant ?

[Ayman Altounji]

Steve,
I have seen similar problems, we have followed all the usual rompaq and patch updates, there is a TID on Novel support site (2959120) which refers to a winsock(3a)update for NW5.X, it specifically refers to fixing bends when winsock calls a spinlock when it has already been found spin lock busy with single processor. I have applied the update and all seems promising thus far

[Ayman Altounji]

We have tried the winsock update, and are still getting the spinlock abends.
SW CNE CDEsoon

[Ayman Altounji]

We also got multiple abend yesterday mid-night. Abend log could not be captured at that time immediately. We only had Compaq Insight Agent Log as follows:

PCI Bus Error (Slot Unknown, Bus 0, Device 8, Function 0)
Abnormal Program Termination (Abend: Found spinlock to be busy with single processor active | Running Process: HPG_SRV_PRC_00C1 EIP:2AFCEh)
Abnormal Program Termination (Abend: Found spinlock to be busy with single processor active | Running Process: HPG_SRV_PRC_00C1 EIP:2AFCEh)
Abnormal Program Termination (Abend: Asset failed | Running Proccess: HPG_SRV_00C4 | Code executing in module TCPIP.NLM v5.22j at offset +2F902h)

Before 2 spinlock abend, there was an PCI Bus Error occured. After checked, there was Remote Insight Board Light-out Edition inserted. Do you also have RIB installed? Pls let me know.

Regards,
Y.W.Ng
emailto:ywng@hgc.com.hk

[Ayman Altounji]

We had the problem before we installed RIB's. We now have about 50 RIB's installed and it hasn't made a difference to these abends. We have updated winsock and the abends have decreased in frequency, but have not stopped completely. Therefore we still do not have the solution. Compaq don't either.

[Ayman Altounji]

So the problem is due to winsock or RIB?
We experienced two spinlock abends before, and all came with PCI Bus Error. As a result, we suspected that the RIB caused the problem. Now we have removed it from our server. Did you also get PCI Bus Error with your RIB?

Regards,
Y.W.Ng

[Ayman Altounji]

We recently upgraded to DS85.12 and included Winsock 4 in the upgrade. Since then we have had NO Spinlock abends. I don't think it is DS related, so I reckon Winsock 4 did the trick. Winsock 4 fixed issues that Winsock 3 was supposed to but didn't. I therefore recommend trying Winsock 4!
Regards,
Steve