please convert to openrc-run

khayyam · Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 10:58 pm Post subject:

Neddy, Tony ...

Where to begin ... I seriously doubt it's hardware. I have a friend with the exact same machine and we have swapped out HD's, power supplies, batteries, and for a week I was using his, and he mine (with a different OS). His machine also crashed similarly (with the same kernel). I also have another machine with similar hardware, and this likewise locks up (same kernel, mostly same config). If it were hardware then I would expect OS X to trigger it, and it doesn't. Also both this laptop and the secondary laptop seem to lock-up for no particular reason, ie, this morning I booted the secondary laptop and after idling at the (console) login prompt for about 5 miniutes the machine was completely locked and required a hard reset. This is a 3.12.58 kernel, but I've had similar issues with 3.14.x, 3.18.x, 4.4.x, and 4.5.x (all recent kernels from these series). As I said, I've lost count of the number of kernels I've built (or attempted to build) in the past year or more, and none of them has been what I would call stable, ie, they crash, and/or lock the machine up, or are for other reasons unusable (ie, not able to provide a framebuffer).

As for other obvious issues, the machine has been completely dismantled and cleaned, heat sync paste replaced (w/ arctic silver), memtest run successfully, HD swapped, badblocks run, the entire system rebuilt. The only common issue thoughout is the kernel ... 3.13.11 is fine, anything more recent (including 3.12.x) will hang (eventually ... normally within the week).

I could hypothesise why this is the case, linux development is directed at those who are either paying developers, or those with the money to buy new machines (and so are providing capital to pay developers) ... everything else exists in the mythological realm of "supported hardware" and if it works then good for you (but otherwise, too bad).

best ... khay

pilla · Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 11:00 pm Post subject:

We have had a bunch of bad capacitors back when I was in grad school, circa 2003-2004. Their caps started to pop out as they got bloated by problems in the composition of their internals.

They made some nice shooting sounds when the caps hit the computer's case.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 12:12 am Post subject:

Tony0945 · Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 12:16 am Post subject:

Khay, the only one I had to block was gentoo-sources-4.2.0

These are all AMD machines. What's your CPU & mobo & PSU? It doesn't hurt to check.

khayyam · Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 1:14 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 3:43 pm Post subject:

khayyam,

It looks like you have done some thorough systems level checks, the result of which is to confirm a systems level issue.
You have swapped some bits around, which at first sight appears to have eliminated those bits, as the problem did not go with the swapped parts.

I'm still of the opinion that its a hardware systems level tolerancing problem aggravated by the software.
More cynically, there is a bug in kernel 3.13.11 that allows it to work, rather than a bug in later kernels. We don't know that the cause is the kernel, just that there appears to be some correlation.

On the transient PSU issue. Heres something to try, if you haven't already.
Try using either the powersave or the performance governor. The idea is to minimise transient stresses on the PSU chain.
Powersave runs the CPU at minimum frequency all the time and performance runs it at max all the time. Neither will eliminate transients but both will reduce them.
If you can put up with the performance hit, powersave will be the best as it will also increase your static PSU load headroom too.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

khayyam · Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 5:27 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 5:49 pm Post subject:

khayyam,

Ahh, I missed the "when idle".
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

proteusx · Guru Joined: 21 Jan 2008 Posts: 338

khayyam,
One of my 32 bit machines is this old (2003) Athlon:

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 12:40 am Post subject:

Khay, I am assuming that you are running gentoo-sources and configuring by hand. Try a build with vanilla-sources or vice versa if my assumption is wrong.

Have you tried emerging with the "experimental" use flag and selecting march=native? Which gives me another thought, which gcc are you running because some versions have trouble with older CPU's. My K6-3 is still running well but gcc is no longer tested against it. Some years ago (3.x series) I was sending them reports and I always got a thank you e-mail that thanked me for testing as no one else was testing against k6. I'll have to fire up my k6 machine and tell you the kernel version and gcc version.

I was about to ask about memory but going into outer space while idling sounds more like an illegal instruction which relates back to the gcc parameters the kernel was built with.

khayyam · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 3:38 am Post subject:

proteusx · Guru Joined: 21 Jan 2008 Posts: 338

pilla · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 3:11 pm Post subject:

khayyam · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 3:25 pm Post subject:

proteusx · Guru Joined: 21 Jan 2008 Posts: 338

@pilla and khayyam.
Thank you for the explanation.

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 7:56 pm Post subject:

Well well. I find I'm actually running 3.18.12 on the old AT box. I'm emerging gentoo-sources-4.4.6 as we speak. There may be a problem with x86 on some of the kernels.

If you can find the sources of 3.18.12 try building without the ck-sources patches using this config https://bpaste.net/show/09857f6af085
It's for a k6-3 so you will have have to change it to your Intel processor and change frequency controller as well as your other hardware changes. I see this is the only box without the "experimental" use flag. That will be remedied with 4.4.6

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 8:01 pm Post subject:

Tony0945,

The sources will be on kernel.org and genpatches will be on dev.gentoo.org somewhere.
I'll find them if you want them.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

khayyam · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 8:47 pm Post subject:

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 10:31 pm Post subject:

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 12:13 am Post subject:

Installed gentoo-sources 4.4.6 on my k6 box. Took all the defaults for oldconfig except for some that defaulted for Y or M for hardware. This is an AT box. The hardware isn't going to change. I also see I still have udev, might as well convert to mdev or static dev for the same reason. Wasted a few hours trying to fix booting into my 32bit faux k6 Gentoo on my Phenom II box. Would up building everything native. Kernel took 6 hours and seven minutes (gcc 4.8.5). Rebooted into the new kernel OK and running emerge -auvND @system. It's about 16 hours into 89 of 90 emerges (udev-225). I don't run X on that box. No crashes but you said yours crashed while idling.

EDIT: Total time for emerge -uvND @system was 16 hours 39 minutes

dol-sen · Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 6:25 am Post subject:

Khayyam. I too had intermittent lockup issues on my new (to me, used) workstation. After doing a number of things including fixing a few slightly bent cpu socket tabs. Those fixed a few bootup correctlable ram errors (ECC mem). I still had the occasional lockup. So I disabled xscreensaver and haven't had another lock up in months. The screen still blanks, but never runs those screensaver graphics and images. So, disable the screensavers, it is a likely cause of your trouble.

BTW, it would lock up on me when idle but not always when it was in screensaver mode.
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khayyam · Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 2:52 pm Post subject:

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 8:26 pm Post subject:

Finished emerge -uvND @world, and additional 3 hours 30 minutes. Rebooted. Can't log in with SSH and have no terminal. Somethings wrong. I get the prompt, give the password, just get the prompt again. Is this similar to your problem?

khayyam · Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 8:53 pm Post subject:

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 9:40 pm Post subject:

[quote="khayyam"Tony ... no, that sounds like you've updated openssh and are effected by the setting of 'PermitRootLogin no' (perhaps you didn't look closely at the changes made to /etc/ssh/sshd_config, or have eu_automerge="yes" in etc-update.conf). If not then you should pass -v, -vv, or -vvv which should provide more info.

best ... khay[/quote]

I remember having that prpblem on other machines, but they had a terminal. I don't think I updated sshd.config but perhaps I hit the wrong key. Now I have to decide which is easier.

1. Upplug a terminal and carry it to the machine.

2. carry the tower to another location that has a terminal.

3. Remove the hard drive, carry it to another machine that has an IDE port and mount the drive on /mnt/gentoo to manually edit the sshd config files.

Booting with a CD is no help because the machine is headless. (Chinese capacitors killed the monitor")