udev: BUG: spinlock bad magic on CPU#0, udevd/447 (Tainted:P )

[John Wendel]

Antonio Olivares wrote:
> Dear List Users,
> 
>    I have successfully installed Fedora 5 on a
> shuttleX machine, AMD 2700 XP processor.  I updated to
> kernel-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 and everything was working
> beautifully and then all of a sudden the machine
> froze.  Could not CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE, could not
> shutdown.  I was surfing the net and this happened.  I
> decided to reset.  When I reset the machine it gave me
> the message
> 
> Starting 
>   udev:  BUG: spinlock bad magic on CPU#0, udevd/447  
> (Tainted:P    )
>  lock: c06e07d4, .magic: c06eo7d4, .owner:{weird
> symbol goes here} ...
>   Bug: spinlock lockup on CPU#0, udev/447 cobeo7d4
> (Tainted:  P).
> 
> It stayed there leaving me no choice but to press and
> hold the power button till it shutdown.  I let it stay
> off for a little and I turned it back on and it let me
> through with no error message as the previous one.
> 
> What does this error mean?
> 
> Is the CPU dying little by little?
> 
> Thanks for your valuable time,
> 
> Antonio

Your hardware is probably just fine. You've been bitten by a bad 
kernel version or bad video driver. Are you running ATI driver?

For your system (I have same one here), I'd build a plain vanilla, 
single CPU kernel with the tarball from kernel.org (2.6.17.7). Mine is 
rock solid with this version.

Just my 2 cents worth.

John