Neil, The following oops was captured while setting up all-RAID1 (all filesystems on RAID1) and run through ksymoops. The kernel oopses when shutdown is attempted with RAID1 devices running in degraded mode and invalidate() is complaining about busy buffers. The symptom is reproducible. Is it something that 2.4.18 fixes (only RAID-related fix in 2.4.18 was from Ingo, "fix rare data-loss case") or a separate problem? Peter ksymoops 2.4.3 on i686 2.4.17. Options used -V (default) -K (specified) -L (specified) -o /lib/modules/2.4.17/ (default) -m /boot/System.map-2.4.17 (default) No modules in ksyms, skipping objects Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 000000d4 c01bb2f1 *pde = 00000000 Oops: 0000 CPU: 0 EIP: 0010:[<c01bb2f1>] Not tainted Using defaults from ksymoops -t elf32-i386 -a i386 EFLAGS: 00010297 eax: 0000004b ebx: cbfea000 ecx: 000000d0 edx: 00000001 esi: cbfd7da0 edi: cbfbf000 ebp: cbfebfac esp: cbfebf94 ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018 Process mdrecoveryd (pid: 8, stackpage=cbfeb000) Stack: cbfea000 cbfea000 c13d2160 fffffc18 000000d0 c025a000 00000001 c01ba19c 00000000 00000100 c1313ef8 c13d2160 0006e000 cbfebfe0 c13d2168 00000000 cbfea000 00000000 00000000 00000000 cbfea000 c13d216c c13d216c c0105594 Call Trace: [<c01ba19c>] [<c0105594>] Code: 81 79 04 10 3f 25 c0 0f 85 f3 fd ff ff 68 20 4d 23 c0 e8 38 >>EIP; c01bb2f0 <md_do_recovery+234/25c> <===== Trace; c01ba19c <md_thread+14c/1b0> Trace; c0105594 <kernel_thread+28/38> Code; c01bb2f0 <md_do_recovery+234/25c> 00000000 <_EIP>: Code; c01bb2f0 <md_do_recovery+234/25c> <===== 0: 81 79 04 10 3f 25 c0 cmpl $0xc0253f10,0x4(%ecx) <===== Code; c01bb2f6 <md_do_recovery+23a/25c> 7: 0f 85 f3 fd ff ff jne fffffe00 <_EIP+0xfffffe00> c01bb0f0 <md_do_recovery+34/25c> Code; c01bb2fc <md_do_recovery+240/25c> d: 68 20 4d 23 c0 push $0xc0234d20 Code; c01bb302 <md_do_recovery+246/25c> 12: e8 38 00 00 00 call 4f <_EIP+0x4f> c01bb33e <md_notify_reboot+26/68> -- .+'''+. .+'''+. .+'''+. .+'''+. .+'' Kelemen Péter / \ / \ / fuji@elte.hu .+' `+...+' `+...+' `+...+' `+...+' - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html