cwpak
asked on
Kernel Bug at page_alloc.c:82
I tried to install Redhat 7.1 booting
from CDROM, and I got weird errors as following:
Kernel command line: initrd=initrd.img lang=text devfs=
nomount BOOT_IMAGE=vmlinuz
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 133.637 MHZ Processor
Console: colour VGA+80x25
Calibrating delay loop.. 266.24 BogoMIPS
Kernel BUG at page_alloc.c:82!
Invalid operand: 0000
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c01286ca>]
EFLAGS: 00010286
eax:0000001f ebx:c1000164 ecx:00000001 edx:c022c104
esi:00000005 edi:c0272cc0 ebp:00000000 esp:c0241f70
ds:0018 es:0018 ss:0018
Process swapper cpid:0, stackpage=c0241000
Stack: c01ee63b c01ee7d0 00000052 ...
... ... ....................
..........................
Call Trace [<c01ee63b>] [<c01ee7d0>] [<c0105000>]
[<c01e4459>] [<c0105000>] [<c0100191>]
Code: 0f 0b 83 c4 0c 8b 43 08 85 c0 74 16 6a 54 68 d0
e7 1e c0 68
Kernel panic: Attempted to kill the idle task!
In idle task - not syncing
I have no idea what's going on. Is this any
hardware problem? Could anyone let me know how
to solve this problem?
Thanks,
cwp
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ASKER
jlevie,
I tried to swap memory chips on board, and
that error's no longer shown. I installed
Redhat 7.1 OK finally. However, I'm still
trying to investigate why memory chips are
bad. While my machine was booting, memory
test successfully performed, and I assumed
that my memory chips were good enough to use.
Do you have any comments on that?
cwp
The memory test done by the BIOS during POST is typically far from exhaustive and in some cases is little more than just a memory sizing exercise. So it is entirely possible for the BIOS routine to "pass" memory that can't be used by the Linux kernel. I don't overly trust the self test of memory done by the BIOS, although you can trust it when it it reports less memory than you know to be installed. In that case a DIMM/SIMM is bad enough for the BIOS to detect and it certainly won't work with an operating system. I don't have a pointer to one handy, but there are real memory exercisers avaliable on the net that can do an exchaustive test of memory. Those are very useful when marginal memory is in the machine. Good enough to boot Linux, but not quite good enough for reliable operation.
ASKER
I have two PCs and I have installed RedHat 7.1
with the same CD on the first machine successfully.
I don't think this is CD image problem,
but this is more like
hardware problem as you mentioned. Could you
be more specific what components of hardware
cause this problem and how to diagnose or solve them?
Thanks,
cwp