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

[James Wilkinson]

Antonio Olivares wrote:
>    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).

That "Tainted: P" bit means a "proprietary module has been loaded". Has
it? You say:

> No, it has via 8237 integrated video card.  Another
> machine I have has ATI Radeon 7000 and it is working
> fine.  

It's possible that you've got something like a VMWare module or
something else loaded. If so, and the problem repeats, try again without
the module loaded. (Kernel bugs can't be properly debugged without the
source code, including the source code to any proprietary modules).

Note that you'll have to stop the module loading at bootup -- merely
unloading it isn't good enough.

If you *haven't* loaded any proprietary drivers, then there's probably
something wrong with your PC's memory. Try memtest86 for starters.

Incidentally, putting something like "{weird symbol goes here}" in a bug
report can *really* *really* annoy whoever's trying to debug the
problem. Usually that's the one bit of data that they really need to
sort out what's going on.

Hope this helps,

James.

-- 
New address: james  | Q. "Why can't I print?"
@aprilcottage.co.uk | A. "Because you're not a printer."
                    |     -- Stephen Judd