Linux 2.4.18 occassionally freezes

Hi list,

I'm experiencing strange system freezes occurring occassionally. I have

plus an updated 2.4.18 kernel (latest stable AFAIK). There are slight differences in additional hardware: some of the machines have an internal
CD burner. With those machines (containing an internal CDRW device) and especially when vmware is installed and used as well, I see the system freezing every now and then. I have difficulties figuring out the cause, as there are no messages in the system log which seem to point me in the right direction. I never had this behaviour so far with a non-CDRW-system.
The freeze sometimes happens two or thress times within one week, afterwards
the machine is just happily working for the next whole month.

What would be good way to catch and eliminate the problem? Should I try so run a kernel with debugging enabled? Or does anyone have similar problems
and maybe some hints how to cope with it?

Many thanx in advance for any help!
Kind regards,
Urte

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All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?

Apart from the kernel, have you updated all the other packages on the systems? It's not just the kernel that needs to be updated; pretty much everything gets updated over the course of a year or more. It seems more likely to be the apps than the kernel; 2.4.18 is indeed the latest stable, but which Red Hat version do you have? 2.4.18-10 is, I think, the latest patch, but RH8.0 uses 2.4.18-14.
Also check your VMWare version - 3.2 is the latest.

I remember having many problems with RH7.1's stability, but when I moved to 7.2 it fixed many of them (although others were introduced.) Applying all the updates to 7.2 made it very much better. 7.3 seems pretty good too. I'm currently trying out 8 on my workstation, but I had a number of little problems with it because a number of key things work differently in 8.

You could experiment with upgrading one of the machines that's showing problems to a later version of RedHat (I wouldn't go for 8 yet as it's very new and although it seems really good, there may still be hidden bugs).

Upgrading to 7.2 or even 7.3 should have very little impact on every day usage because the changes are mostly bug-fixes etc, so even if you have one machine at 7.3 and the rest at 7.1, it shouldn't generate too many problems.

Paul.

Paul Furness

Systems Manager

2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2.

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Hi Paul,

I currently do security updates, but I did not upgrade all packages on the system. I already thought about trying RedHat 7.2 or 7.3 to see if the problem still exists. The current system is RedHat 7.1. Generally I don't have a problem with stability in 7.1 except when running in this configuration with CDRW and vmware usage.

It is VMware-3.0. May be an update might be a good idea here as well.

Trying 8 would be a step too far, I agree.

Thanks for your ideas,
kind regards,
Urte

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I ran into a problem with a SCSI CDRW running on an
Adaptec 2920 (I think) scsi card. The problem wasn't with the cdrw it was with the drivers that supported the scsi card. The card wasn't made by adaptec and was using a future domain chipset. The fdomain driver hung my system everytime I tried to use the CDRW in write mode, and sometimes in read mode. I looked for fixes but wasn't able to find any. Other's I talked to had the same problem.
Don't know if that applies to your situation or
not...

Kyle.

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Hi Kyle,

My CDRW is an IDE device, so the scsi driver can't be fooled here... I don't have explicit problems when accessing the cdrw drive while vmware is running or something like that unfortunately. This would at least give an idea of what might be going on. The system freeze I see happens just once in a while in different situations. Sometimes the system just hangs while being unattended and the user comes back and calls me if I did something with the machine. :-) Another time starting vmware (without even booting the Guest OS) causes the hang. Sometimes it happens during night when some calculations running (and sure nobody accesses the cdrw). I'm even not sure if it has anything to do with the cdrw. It's just a raw guess that it might be related.

One of the problem is that I didn't find other people with the same problem so far.

Urte

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All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?