Tyan 2466 SMP locks hard with 2.4.20 + heavy disk i/o yet runs 2.2.* without problems

System:
Tyan 2466 MPX board, 2 Athlon 1800MP, bios 1.01 from March 2002 1 gb ram, ibm + maxtor ide disks, ide cdrom + cdrw ati rage 128, sb pci 128, on-board 3c905 nic
no other cards
hardware configuration unaltered since June of last year

Performance under 2.2.20 with ext3 + win4lin patches
+ Flawless
+ Uptime of _over 200 days_ with fairly heavy use until UPS got tripped
+ Can run bonnie++ with no issues other than very noticeable i/o slowdown

Performance under 2.4.20 with ext3 + win4lin patch
- "Stable" until disk-heavy operation causes freeze, typically within two to three days
- Heavy disk use (full backup writing, diff against big tarball, bonnie++) freeze the machine hard, no ping, no sign of live
+ memtest86 shows no problem with the ram

I searched via google and google groups, but found no pertinent idea for my
case: No raid or scsi controller, memory doesn't seem to be an issue as it works really, really well under 2.2.20 and memtest86 passes too. The system is generally very stable under 2.2.20 --- but gets killed by 2.4.20.

I run fairly stock kernels (from Debian kernel source packages) with the win4lin patches, and the ext3 patch in the case of 2.2.20. ACPI is disabled. Disk access is not tuned in any way, DMA gets enabled by default.

I would be happy to try out suggestions in terms of different kernel configurations, or patches. I would prefer to stay with the 2.4.* kernel for now.

Thanks in advance for any pointers. CCs are welcome.

Dirk

Don't drink and derive. Alcohol and algebra don't mix.

If you don't have a PS/2 mouse plugged into the box add one. If that doens't help duplicate the crash without win4lin.

My bad: I do have a PS/2 mouse plugged in.

Good idea, will do and will try your most recent rc1-ac? as well.

Thanks, Dirk

Don't drink and derive. Alcohol and algebra don't mix.

Turns out that 2.4.21-rc1 is rock solid. Behaved very well without win4lin, and is looking good with4lin (survived double bonnie++ tests).

I also unchecked CONIG_ISA, CONFIG_PM, CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX which may have contributed to the lockups under 2.4.20.

Thanks, Dirk

Don't drink and derive. Alcohol and algebra don't mix.

System:
Tyan 2466 MPX board, 2 Athlon 1800MP, bios 1.01 from March 2002 1 gb ram, ibm + maxtor ide disks, ide cdrom + cdrw ati rage 128, sb pci 128, on-board 3c905 nic, ps/2 mouse no other cards
hardware configuration unaltered since June of last year

Enabling or disabling the HIGHME patch is enough to trigger/suppress hard locking. When HIGHMEM is enabled, locking occurs very easily when trying to copy a (cloop-mounted) Knoppix image, or even when compiling a kernel.

I run fairly stock kernels (from Debian kernel source packages) with the win4lin patch as the only external patch. ACPI is disabled. Disk access is not tuned in any way, DMA gets enabled by default.

Dirk

Don't drink and derive. Alcohol and algebra don't mix.

As a follow-up, 2.4.21-rc2 looks fine so far. The only other change was to enable support the proper mobo i/o chipset, which I should have done earlier.

Dirk

Don't drink and derive. Alcohol and algebra don't mix.