Hi, [Linux users for over 8 years, I am pretty new to kernel development/debugging] I am hitting an issue where my box hangs (No keyboard, no ssh. Box is dead.) and I want obviously to fix the issue and have several questions. The hang is very easily reproducible (the box already hanged while I wrote this mail...) and other people apparently experience it. Q1: The box is running on a C3 processor. Some said that one way to avoid the problem was to be sure that the box was not running any 686 code. I am 99% sure the box isn't, but is there a way to find this out, e.g. by using a tool that will analyze the binaries? I read that some arm development tools detect similar problems (usually created when cross-compiling). With regard to the hang, my understanding of the documentation I've read ([1] [2] and [3]) is that I need to: - setup system to be able to use the magic SysRq [DONE] - use the serial console. That's where I am stuck But before I try to set this serial console, I want to be sure it's going to be of any help. Q2: And now the dumb/newie question: if my keyboard is dead, how can I be sure that the magic SysRq will work? I am pretty sure it will, but if someone had an insight on how it works... I am just curious. Now I need to find a cable... In the mean time, I will try to setup strace on the two main processes to see if there's interesting coming out of it. I will also probably need to set up cross compiling because building the kernel on that box is taking too long. Any advice appreciated. Thanks, Jerome [1] http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/ch04.html [2] http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2003-April/030635.html [3] http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/ Details on the problem ------------------------------- I settled to build a MythTV PVR using the following hardware: - VIA Epia M10000 board - Haupage PVR 350 tuner card Apparently that was a bad choice... many persons are experiencing locks using the combination of hardware. Some people even thing it may be a hardware issue, maybe due to VT8235 chipset. See [4]. I've disabled DMA on my disk, and ended up with a much longer uptime than usual (18h), but it crashed anyway when I ended up using the mythfrontend application. So problem might be related to DMA. It looks like it goes in a loop. Sometimes when locked, it plays sound in loop that lasts between 0.5 and 1 sec. [4] http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=60131&STARTPAGE=1#391672 -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
