kernel panic

[Gilboa Davara]

On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 08:40 -0800, Gerhard Magnus wrote:
> I've been running FC4 for several months now and have been using yum
> update without problems.  The system has been automatically selecting
> kernels with names ending in "smp".  This morning, for no apparent
> reason, I kept getting a kernel panic when I tried to boot and the
> system hung repeatedly.  I was only able to get past this by selecting
> 2.6.14.1.1644_FC4 instead of 2.6.14.1.1644_FC4smp from the boot

I'm having the same problem.
My SCSI based Dual Opteron machine (x86-64) fails to boot with 1644.
Somehow, the adatec79xx driver init fails, leaving me without the root
LVM. (From there, attempt to kill init, panic.)
Can you post your machine configuration?

> configuration menu.
> 
> It was just a guess.  I have no idea why this worked.
> 
> According to webopedia.com, SMP is "Short for Symmetric Multiprocessing,
> a computer architecture that provides fast performance by making
> multiple CPUs available to complete individual process simultaneously.
> Unlike asymmetrical processing, any idle processor can be assigned any
> task, and additional CPUs can be added to improve performance and handle
> increased loads."

I doubt that this has anything to do with SMP. machines.
However, it is possible that the SMP configuration on 1644 is burked.
Did you try older kernels?

> 
> Does this refer to other processors on the same computer or on different
> machines on a network?  The other machines on this very minimally
> networked LAN (just for ssh) aren't always up or running FC4 when they
> are up.  None of these computers are dual core.  I'm not trying to do
> any smp-type processing at this time.

No.
SMP means:
Single machine with multiple logical or physical processors.
In general, you can view an SMP machine as car with multiple engines
working concurrently. (Instead of a single engine)

> 
> Could the smp kernel ran into some sort of synchronization problem with
> the other machines and now be "parametrically confused" about something?
> I'd like to either (1) reset it or (2) fix the update process so that
> the default is for non-smp kernels.  Thanks for any suggestions.
> 

Again, I doubt it.

Gilboa