[Haifux] Kernel oops, so what?

[Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Eli Billauer <eli at billauer.co.il> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
> Maybe this is a "boker-tov-eliyahu" thing, but still. I've installed
> Fedora 12, just to find out that it warns me about kernel oopses. In my
> remote memories, I recall that a kernel oops usually meant that my
> hardware was cooking (in those days when Linux was rock solid and
> hardware wasn't) and the computer froze completely.
>
>
> Now I get an oops warning every now and then, but nothing really
> happens. And I wonder what is going on? Has the dreaded oops become
> something one can live with? And then there's this site which collects

Hypothesis: nowadays, machines have at least two cores. Even if
something got seriously messed up on one core, there is still the
other core still able to do something and recover somehow. This
recovery may not be optimal, but it brings the system back to a
"legal" state, from which it can continue without halting. In old
machines, concurrency was "fake", and was actually timesharing of the
same CPU, so a crash was fatal.

> oops reports (http://www.kerneloops.org/) which, judging by its sluggish
> response, is a pretty busy project. Oopses keep flooding in.
>
>
> So, should I just take it cool and wait for a new kernel with this
> fixed, ignoring these messages?
>
>
> Just for the heck of it, the relevant part from /var/log/messages
> follows. I am running on a new Gigabyte motherboard. I don't expect
> anyone to dissect this. I mean, a report has been submitted.
>
>
>   Eli
>
>
> ----- log follows, for the fun -----
>
>
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: WARNING: at arch/x86/kernel/hpet.c:390
> hpet_next_event+0x5c/0x81() (Not tainted)
>
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: Hardware name: P55-UD3R
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: Modules linked in:
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted
> 2.6.31.5-127.fc12.x86_64 #1
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: Call Trace:
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff81051694>]
> warn_slowpath_common+0x84/0x9c
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff810516c0>]
> warn_slowpath_null+0x14/0x16
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff8102d040>] hpet_next_event+0x5c/0x81
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff8102d08b>]
> hpet_legacy_next_event+0x10/0x12
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff81071953>]
> clockevents_program_event+0x7a/0x83
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff81072a9d>]
> tick_dev_program_event+0x3c/0xaa
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff8107249d>]
> tick_broadcast_oneshot_control+0xa4/0x100
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff81071dc7>] tick_notify+0x222/0x379
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff8141d02b>]
> notifier_call_chain+0x32/0x5e
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff8106b70c>]
> raw_notifier_call_chain+0x14/0x16
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff810717a0>]
> clockevents_notify+0x39/0x76
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff812671b1>]
> lapic_timer_state_broadcast+0x46/0x48
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff8126772e>]
> acpi_idle_enter_bm+0x18a/0x2b5
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff813538a3>]
> cpuidle_idle_call+0x8d/0xc2
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff81010c60>] cpu_idle+0xa6/0xe9
> Jan 15 14:45:17 test kernel: [<ffffffff814145be>]
> start_secondary+0x1f3/0x234
>
> --
> Web: http://www.billauer.co.il
>
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