OK. You want an opinion. It's only a guess, but I'd suspect a problem with
your swap partition, since the failure described is a paging problem:
> > Oct 5 04:45:04 k kernel: Unable to handle kernel paging
request at
> > virtual address 361dcf1b
Also, ftp transfers tend to fill up memory. With 256 MB of real RAM, and
the process list you sent, an ftp transfer mat be the only thing that ever
triggers use of swap space.
To explore this guess, try the following (assuming this is a problem that
recurs):
1. Run "top" in some way that will let you see its last output
before a failure (maybe over a telnet or ssh connection). Then notice if
this problem occurs when you are just starting to use swap.
2. Disable your swap partition and see if the problem stops happening.
3. If you do NOT have DMA enabled for your hard drive, try
enabling it (with hdparm) and see if that helps. The problem may just be
timing.
All this said, my guess is only that -- a guess. As I noted in another
recent thread, a large ftp transfer is a good stress test for all parts of
the system, so it will unearth any hardware problems you might have (in my
case, most recently it unearthed a marginal power supply, as an example --
different failure mode, though).
At 04:28 PM 10/5/02 +0300, Petre Bandac wrote:
>petre@k:~$ uname -a
>Linux k 2.4.18-HTB #4 Wed Sep 25 02:47:50 EEST 2002 i686 unknown
>
>it is a Slackware 8.1 installed a few weeks ago
>
>I have 256 MB RAM and 200 MB swap space
>
>I stay away for the experimental kernels, as what I want from my system is
>stability.
>
>the uptime of the machine was at that time 4 days, 21:14:36. It is my home
>box, I run x-window on it (KDE), but at that time x-window wasn't running, so
>the only processes runing were those required by the system, plus apache plus
>http (below I'll list them). The only reason which comes to my mind is that
>at the time the crash occured I was doing a ftp upload on the machine @ ~200
>KB (yes, kilo Bytes). If it makes any difference, I'm connected through a
>LanCity cable modem.
>
>I shall look at the file you mentioned, richard, thank you, though I would
>like to have some opinions on what caused this error (one of the few "fatal"
>errors I have seen on linux machines yet).
[details deleted]
--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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