System lockup with SMP Kernel

[Robert D. Arendt]

Paul Furness wrote:
> This may or nay not have a bearing here: I left cron and anacron stopped
> overnight, and for the first time since the install (about 10 days ago)
> the system worked overnight. I'll leave it going for another 24 hours
> and if it _still_ works I'll add a comment to bugzilla. 
> 
> If it is something triggered by cron, it'll take a while to track down
> exactly what - I can run each of the cron.daily scripts from the command
> prompt without a problem. 
> 
> Hmm. I wonder if it's something to do with an anacron-triggered job
> running after the disks have spun down due to inactivity? 
> 
> That's something that doesn't happen on server builds, I think.
> 
> P.
>

You might look at this bug:
   http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=110575

The slocate search run as part of /etc/cron.daily might inadvertently
try to exercise all sorts of devices while it scans your system, unless
they're in the excludes list.  You test can this by trying to run
   /etc/cron.daily/slocate.cron
as root, and see if you get the lockup.  Or conversely, rename it to
   slocate.cron.rpmorig
and the /usr/bin/run-parts script (referenced in /etc/crontab) will skip it.
Then if you don't get the lockup, you're good.

Hope this helps,
-Bob Arendt