fc1 i686 smp kernel crashes

[Bill Rugolsky Jr.]

On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 09:49:45AM +1100, Norman Gaywood wrote:
> There have been a lot of threads about the stability of the FC1 SMP
> kernel on this list. Most point to these bugzillas:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=109962

I wonder whether this patch from Andrea Arcangeli's tree helps with
umount:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.23aa2/00_umount-against-unused-dirty-inodes-race-2

[This week I hacked mkinitrd to use genext2fs, just to avoid the
other (related?) long-lived umount problem: "spinning in umount of
loopback-mounted file". Now I can at least install a new kernel
without hassle.]

> I doubt this problem will be fixed. It's been around a long time and
> there are now some shiny new toys (2.6 kernel) to distract the kernel
> developers.
 
I came across the above patch today as I've gone searching for
alternatives to the FC1 kernels. It's going to be a busy weekend
evaluating the alternatives as a base kernel on which to add local fixes
and functionality.  Working NPTL is a requirement.  I'm currently looking
at:

 	- RHEL3 errata kernel
	- Andrea's 2.4.23aa2
	- Franken-kernel based on 2.4.25-rmap15l,O(1)-sched,futex,nptl
	- 2.6.x kernel

Much as I'd like to just start using 2.6 everywhere, it still feels
a bit premature, judging by the traffic on LKML, so I'm looking for
a solution to bridge the next few months.

Regards,

	Bill Rugolsky