[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux crashes

[newsseeker]

MadHat wrote:

> S Jackson wrote:
> >
> > I'm surprised to here these problems being blamed on SMP.  I have 5 SMP
> > machines (ranging from a dual PPro to a dual P3-500) and I have never
> > had any problems.  I never had problems with 2.2.5 but I use 2.2.9+ on
> > all my machines now, so maybe you could try a kernel update?
> >
>
> I agree.  I know that SMP is still fairly new with x86 based machines
> (as compared to commercial *nix run on say SPARC or others), but I run
> several machines with Dual CPUs and have yet to see a problem (2.2.9+ as
> well).  <snip>

I tend to think that it depends on the motherboard, and how new some of them are.  I
do know there is a wide variance in 'APIC' modules (if you have that type of
motherboard), and sometimes the module doesn't keep up.  I've seen other newsgroup
messages where others have had these problems as well.

 I'm thinking specifically about my machine where I have seen deadlocks before, but
after 'tweaking' the bios, it has seldom crash....However, one thing (the only thing
so far) that always crashes my machine is to compile the kernel with a 'make -j'
command....I will absolutely get a hard lockup (sometimes with a message about the
SMP deadlock).  My machine is a PC Chips M570 with a dual PIIs/333Mhz (I know, I know
PC Chips is far from the best, but the price was hard to pass up on my end...less
than $20.).

--nwskr