Fresh 7.0 Install: Fatal Trap 12 panic when put under load

[Chuck Swiger]

On Jul 24, 2008, at 9:15 AM, John Sullivan wrote:
> Right, after trying for a number of days the system still just hung  
> without letting me get either a dump or to interactively debug
> in the failed state, I reverted back to the Generic kernel, removed  
> half the memory (2 of the 4 1GB sticks) and the system became
> stable.  I inserted 1 of the 2 removed sticks and all was fine.  I  
> swapped that stick with the remaining stick and all was fine.  I
> put them both back in and I started to see the crashes again - the  
> first of which, gave me this dump -->

You might want to double-check the detailed documentation about your  
motherboard.

There are a fair number of consumer-grade motherboards that can't  
reliably handle 4 double-sided DIMMs at full speed.  Some of them  
require you to downgrade the memory clock from, say, PC3200 (aka  
200MHz DDR) down to PC2700 speed (aka 166MHz DDR); others may work,  
but only if you install the more expensive buffered type of RAM (which  
also tend to include ECC) rather than generic unbuffered RAM.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck