[SLUG] Kernel 2.4 problems

[Jeffrey Borg <jeffrey@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone

I had to cold reboot the server yet AGAIN because of a filesystem problem

I was rebuilding the mysql source rpm and once finished of couse the rpm
cleans up the build directory and the rm command get's stuck on io.

of couse kill -9 <pid of rm> would work but rm wouldn't die

ok so a ls -l is in order of the directory no such luck.

of couse over the course of a day stuff like slocate dies :-)

of couse halt, reboot, sync, mount -o ro,remount / etc.. all get stuk!

Pull the power cable out and reboot cold comes back up and the fsck can
not recover the drive, so doing it manually and answering y to everything
does the trick and leaves stuff in lost+found which includes a few pieces
of email from /var/spool/mqueue (nothing really important) and the
configure script for the mysql build.


Is anybody else having these problems with 2.4 and if not give me any idea
on how to track down the problem.

Here are somethings about the machine
redhat 6.1 originally
kernel 2.4.9 compiled with the default compiler in redhat 6.2
  gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)

drivers in kernel (of importance)
 sym53c8xx
 es1371
 intel pro 10/100
 raid1
 ppp
 iptables (net filter)
Other stuff like serial, parallel, lp, ide, scsi tape support, ps2 mouse

Kernel modules
win4lin (thouh it runs fine)
skymedia 200dpa (this is a .o file compiled with some source to build a
module)
nvidia X driver - 1.0-1512 on Xfree86 4.1.0

It has 2 ide disks a 6gb  and 8gb with 6gb being raided. and a 2gb
partition on the 8gb disk just because I need the space :-)

the raid has 3 partitions setup
a 20mb for /boot
128mb swap
rest for /

Mahcine is a Intel PIII 1ghz with 512mb ram (yes I know swap is too small
originally it was a p200 with 64mb ram then a PII with 256mb then this)

Though come to think of it I may take the swap OFF raid and make it 256mb.

All I know is that I am lucky to go a week without some process locking on
io.

Anyway if anybody has any auggestions as where to start fire away :-) If
you make private replies I will post a followup to this.

Jeffrey Borg