Take a look at your hardware microcode level.  This may be your problem.

 060310 HIPER MCL's for 2097, 2098

Document number:        060310
Machine type:   2097, 2098
Models affected:        All Models
Abstract:       HIPER MCLs have been released for machines at Driver 76 and 
Driver 79




Description


HIPER MCLs have been released to address an issue reported in the field. This 
issue has only been seen in the Linux on System z operating system running as 
guest under zVM and has resulted in a Linux abend. This issue occurred when the 
physical CPU transitioned from handling one guest configuration to another. A 
very small window exists where the update of the hardware controls related to 
multiprocessor address translation were not handled properly. There are no 
methods to avoid exposure to this issue other than installing the specified 
HIPER MCL's.

This problem has only been reported when running Linux on System z as a guest 
under zVM. However, IBM believes it could also occur when running other 
operating systems. Although an undetected data corruption has never been 
reported as a result of this issue, there is a very small chance that this 
could occur.

The following HIPER MCLs have been released to eliminate the exposure:

Driver 73 -- Driver-73 entered "End of MCL Support" August 2009 and a fix for 
this issue will not be released for this Driver. Product Engineering strongly 
recommends upgrading to Driver-79 to obtain this fix.
Driver 76 -- MCL's N10967.101 and N10967.102 of the I390ML stream released to 
RETAIN on June 1st, 2010 in MCL bundle #47.
Driver 79 -- MCL's N24406.032 and N24406.033 of the I390ML stream released to 
RETAIN on June 1st, 2010 in MCL bundle #31.

Recommended action


Product Engineering recommends the installation of HIPER MCLs . These MCLs can 
be installed concurrent with system operation.

Note- Driver-76 is currently in "Limited MCL Support" mode and will enter "End 
of MCL Support" on June 30, 2010. Product Engineering strongly recommends 
upgrading to Driver-79 during you next microcode maintenance window. Driver-79 
was released in November 2009 and is running on 40% of the z10 machines in the 
field. Driver-79 is also the last planned driver for z10.

EDM Considerations: The installation of these HIPER MCL's at Driver-76 will 
exceed the current EDM min/max definition for concurrently upgrading to 
Driver-79. A new EDM sync point is being developed and is targeted to be 
released mid to late June, 2010. The following options are available:

1) Upgrade to Driver-79 and install the latest HIPER MCL's
2) Install the latest Driver-76 HIPER MCL's and wait for the next EDM sync 
point to be released.

Note: Since these Driver-76 HIPER MCL's exceed the current EDM min/max level 
you need to take additional actions to ensure the MCL install and activate 
process overrides the current min/max level. To do this you need to insure that 
you select the 'check box' "Include internal code changes which will inhibit 
Concurrent Upgrade Engineering Changes (EC) task from being used to apply the 
next Licensed Internal Code (EC) level." before installing the Driver-76 HIPER 
MCL's.

Regards,
Aaron

-----Original Message-----
From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Joell 
Chockley
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 2:08 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Kernel panic - not syncing error on Red Hat Linux

Has anyone had any experience with the following error in Red Hat Linux?

Kernel panic - not syncing: Out of memory and no killable processes error
and system is frozen and has to be hard rebooted.

cat /etc/redhat-release output is:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 4).

uname -a output is:
Linux timmon1.corp.bcbsks.com 2.6.9-42.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jul 12 23:27:17 EDT
2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

I have a screen print of the console when it's frozen, but didn't know
about attaching a graphic to a question.  I also have a meminfo.out file
and sysreport output that I can send if anyone thinks that would be
helpful.  We've changed the setting for lower_zone_protection as
recommended from Red Hat and it's not having any impact on this problem
occuring.

Setting change from Red Hat:
echo 100 > /proc/sys/vm/lower_zone_protection

We've had this problem occur off and on with both of our Red Hat systems,
but this one in particular has been having a major problem the last week
and has been locking up about 3 times a day.  We use the Linux systems with
our CA Wily product for monitoring on the network.

The top command right now shows this output:
top - 12:44:49 up  2:16,  1 user,  load average: 0.42, 0.21, 0.17
Tasks:  73 total,   1 running,  72 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 23.2% us,  0.3% sy,  0.0% ni, 64.6% id, 11.8% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0%
si
Mem:   4144696k total,  1137308k used,  3007388k free,      448k buffers%
Swap:  4088532k total,        0k used,  4088532k free,    41672k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 4256 root      16   0  470m 204m 9204 S   94  5.1  36:01.64 tim
 3271 apache    16   0 13164 7068 3052 S    0  0.2   0:01.41 httpd

And the system just locked up on me again...3rd time today.

Any thoughts or ideas of where to look would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Joell Chockley
System Capacity/Performance Specialist
Blue Cross Blue Shield of KS
1133 Topeka Blvd
Topeka, KS  66629-0001
Work (785)291-7837



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