Newbie: Kernel panic ?? FC3 2.6.11

[John Summerfied]

Clive at Rational wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>    I rarely run my Fedora Linux (FC3 2.6.11) machine
> for hours at a time, even though Linux has the
> reputation of being very stable.

Major source of system crashes here is hardware (including power).
> 
>     I left my Linux laptop to run overnight. When left

That's fine. I regularly run machines for weeks at a time.

> the day before the command-line logon prompt was
> showing, X was not running.
> 
>    When I looked at the Linux screen this morning it
> was covered with lots of messages (see below) and lots
> of hex values. I pressed the "enter" key and the logon
> prompt appeared. I was able to log on and start X.
> 
>    I acccessed the Linux machine using VNC but running
> a command caused the VNC Connection to drop.
> 
>    Looking at /var/log/messages I have pasted a sample
> below. I don't know if there is sufficent information
> provided. I don't know where a message sequence begins
> or ends.
><snip>

> Jun 29 07:39:20 localhost kernel: ds: 007b   es: 007b 
>  ss: 0068
> Jun 29 07:39:20 localhost kernel: Process Xvnc (pid:
> 4535, threadinfo=dcc97000 t
> ask=dae8a1b0)
> 
This is the kernel killing Xvnc. Why, I couldn't see clearly.

I suggest you
1. Open an accound at bugzilla.redhat.com if you don't have one
2. Create a bug report against the kernel. If it's not the kernel, 
someone will change it so don't be too concerned about getting the right 
component.

Describe as best you can what you did to create the problem. After 
you've created the report, you can add a file.

Create an extract from /var/log/messages that covers the entire span of 
time for one incident, and attach that file to the report.

3. Locate and install te latest FC 2.6.10 kernel. There have been 
several probelms with the 2.6.11 kernels and I prefer to avoid them.

4. Whether or not the problem goes away with the older kernel, update 
your bug report to reflect that fact.

Note: keep the .11 kernel in case it's needed for more testing.

Note: you might wish to update /etc/sysconfig/kernel so installing new 
kernels doesn't get grub.conf updated, and change grub.conf to boot a 
working kernel (if you find one).



-- 

Cheers
John

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