Linux emulation instability

[Jung-uk Kim]

On Monday 05 March 2007 06:34 pm, Doug Barton wrote:
> Jung-uk Kim wrote:
> > On Sunday 04 March 2007 06:27 pm, Doug Barton wrote:
> >> jkim,
> >>
> >> The attached change to sys/i386/linux/linux_machdep.c causes my
> >> linux emulation to spontaneously reboot my machine (no panic,
> >> just BOOM) whenever I use the linux version of the thunderbird
> >> beta (that I'm using right now to type this). I built a system
> >> from sources right before this change and everything is normal,
> >> then when I add this change it becomes unstable.
> >
> > That is very strange.
> >
> >> I'm currently in the process of building an up to date -current
> >> without this change to see if that's stable for me, but I
> >> thought you'd want to know ASAP.
> >
> > Please go ahead and let me know.
>
> I was in the process of doing that while running what should have
> been a "safe" kernel (before the change I referenced above) when I
> got the same symptom again, using the linux firefox caused the
> system to freeze (the more it happens, I get variations on a total
> freeze or a spontaneous reboot). This led me to think that it might
> be something else.
>
> I've been using ULE and libthr, so I decided to turn those off and
> see if it makes a difference. I first tried rebooting without the
> libmap.conf entry for libthr (but still on a ULE kernel), and it
> actually locked up faster than it had been doing. I then updated to
> the latest sources and built a new kernel with 4BSD, and I've been
> using it with the linux mail client for about half an hour now
> without any problems so far.
>
> So, this leads me to the obvious question, are you testing your
> changes with ULE and/or libthr? I should probably add the detail
> that I have a Core 2 Duo processor running i386 and SMP.

I am currently using ULE and libthr on amd64 and UP.  So, I am not 
sure if I can help you cause I never had this type of problem on 
amd64/UP.  Can you try turning off SMP but with ULE and libthr first?  
That way, at least we know whether it is SMP issue or not.  Also 
there are known issues with Linux futex support and SMP.  Are you 
using Linux 2.6.16 kernel emulation?  You can check it out by running 
'sysctl compat.linux.osrelease'.

> If there is anything further I can do to help please let me know.
> Meanwhile I'm going to try running with the 4BSD kernel for a while
> and I'll let you know if it locks up again.

Thanks,

Jung-uk Kim