I had this same problem but my solution may not be a good one. I had a server that worked flawlessly for 2 years. It only had 512m of memory and we decided to upgrade. I added 2 GB to make a total of 2.5GB. This system ran 2.6.5 kernel with FC2. After the upgrade I saw this problem. We use vtun and run pppd that way so after about 3 days I would see at least a 100 pppd processes like this. Kill -9 did not work and load average was at 100+. The system become non-responsive. I could not log in. Luckily I invested in intelligent power strips that saved me a trip to the data center. To fix this problem I would issue an off then on command to the strip for that outlet. I thought it might have been a memory issue but I downloaded the 2.6.10 kernel upgrade for FC2, compiled it and my problem went away. I'm not sure what was causing this issue but it only started when I went from 512m to 2.5G of ram. On Thu, 2007-09-20 at 02:07 -0400, Zygo Blaxell wrote: > In article <46EC9B4B.80809@xxxxxxxx>, > Michele Mencacci <shire@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >Hello there, > >I don't know since when, ( before I had 2.6.16 and now I'm passed to > >2.6.22.3), but now pppd while is running, it stops, or better it's live, > >but I can't send or receive....and if I kill it, it hangs-up the modem, > >but it remain live in D+state and I can only reboot the linux box :( > >Instead with 2.6.16 it works fine...well sometime it stops but I can > >kill and restart, but less often than 2.6.22. > >It appears to be random.....any hints? > > For what it's worth I see this too (2.6.22.1). > > pppd goes into D state, and so does 'ifconfig' and several other > programs that try to use ioctl calls to enumerate network interfaces. > Eventually every process on the system is in D state and I have to reboot > to get anything to work. > > I have two ADSL PPPoE feeds. The second feed continues to work after the > first goes down, except that if the second feed goes down too, its pppd > process gets into the same state. Actually all attempts to bring any > network interface up or down have the same result: the process trying to > do this ends up in D state. > > Sometimes, though not always, there is a kernel log message which complains > that the ppp interface has reference count = 1. > > I've also used 2.6.16.19, 2.6.16.42, and 2.6.18.8, which don't have this > problem, but they did have other bugs which crash the whole machine. > > At least with this bug, my system is able to reboot itself if it gets > stuck. Ah, progress. ;-) > - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ppp" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
