[H-GEN] running windows?

[Martin Pool]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]

At 10:18 6/10/99 +1000, you wrote:
>[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
>Unix-related topics. ]
>
>On Sat, Oct 02, 1999 at 04:29:11PM +1000, Paul Gearon wrote:
>> The second time it crashed as I was opening a gterm, so I got to see the
>> kernel panic:
>> confusion kernel:  Kernel panic: Free list corrupted.
>
>just taking a stab at this but the ext2 file system maintains a free list
>it's not filesystem/harddrive corruption?

IIRC, that message can be caused by corruption in the kernel's own
memory-allocation scheme (kmalloc, vmalloc, and so on.)  Typically it means
that something in the kernel has written past the beginning or end of an
array, or used memory after it was freed, or any of the other amusements
invented by Messrs Kernighan and Ritchie.  

So, my first check would be that the kernel and modules I was using are
reasonably stable.  Eliminating unnecessary modules would be a good start.
If that all seems reasonable, then I would suspect flaky hardware.

-- 
 /\\\  Mincom | Martin Pool          | martinp at mincom.com
// \\\        | Software Engineer    | Phone: +61 7 3303-3333
\\ ///        | Mincom Ltd.          | 
 \///         | Teneriffe, Brisbane  | Speaking for myself only


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