From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.9-7 i686) Description of problem: When moving mouse cursor rapidly all system functions cease - Keyboard, display, and mouse all stop working. Cannot even ping or telnet to machine from LAN. Two days since upgrade from RHL 7.1 to 7.2 - both days experienced lock-up. Yesterday during srolling of image in "GQview" when rapidly shifing pointer position to file selection frame. Today after selecting a block of text in "gedit" then rapidly right-clicking for the pop-up edit menu. Notes: (1) First failure occurred prior to kernel upgrade (to 2.4.9-7). Second failure occurred several hours after upgrade. (2) 7.1 would occasionally lock-up the display during same actions, but <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace> would reset "gdm". Also, I could still ping and telnet to the machine. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Kernel ver. 2.4.9-7 (and 2.4.7-10) How reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Login to Gnome Desktop. 2. Start an ftp or usenet download 3. Open GQview and click down through some large images, moving the larger-than-frame images around with the mouse to view hiddent extents. 4. After viewing several large images, rapidly move the pointer to the file selection frame and select several images, then delete them and rapidly go back to scrolling through images. [OR] 1. Establish a dialup connection in the Windows NT guest OS of VMware. 2. begin downloading several large files over the dial-up connection. 3. Minimize VMware window and begin editing a large document in "gedit", cutting and pasting the contents in different places using the right-click pop-up edit menu. Actual Results: The system locks up completely. I've only been able to duplicate this failure during intermittent episodes of editing text or viewing graphics images. Expected Results: Expect that I should be able to use the full resources of this computer without it freezing up. Additional info: CPU, Memory, Disk and Network loads were light (gkrellm). Each episode occurred while background transfers were in progress and some graphics application was running (GQview/VMware). Hardware Profile: Dell Dimension XPS B733 (PIII 733) Ultra ATA Seagate 80GB EIDE Western Digital 10GB 384 MB RAM =========== /etc/sysconfig/hwconf =========== desc: "Intel Corporation|82820 820 (Camino) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH)" desc: "Intel Corporation|82820 820 (Camino) Chipset PCI to AGP Bridge" desc: "Intel Corporation|82801AA PCI Bridge" desc: "Intel Corporation|82801AA ISA Bridge (LPC)" desc: "Intel Corporation|82801AA IDE" desc: "Intel Corporation|82801AA SMBus" desc: "Creative Labs|SB Live!" desc: "USB UHCI Root Hub" desc: "ViewQuest Technologies, Inc. Intel Pro Share WebCam" desc: "3Com Corporation|3c905C-TX [Fast Etherlink]" desc: "Generic 3 Button Mouse (PS/2)" desc: "Creative Labs|SB Live! EMU10000" desc: "Lg CD-RW CED-8080B" desc: "US Robotics/3Com|56K FaxModem Model 5610" desc: "nVidia Corporation|Vanta [NV6]" desc: "LS-120 VER5 00 UHD Floppy" desc: "ST380021A" desc: "WDC WD102AA" desc: "Brooktree Corporation|Bt848 TV with DMA push" desc: "Intel Corporation|82801AA USB" ============================================= Active Software Profile: RedHat Linux 7.1 ->Samba ->sshd ->xinetd ->lpd ->Sendmail ->vmnet (VMware) ->rhnsd ->Gnome->Sawfish VMware (WinNT WS4, 128MB, 2GB)->Dial-Up Networking->SMB File Transfer GKrellm gedit Netscape->Navigator & Messenger Substitute "GQview" and "Pan" for "gedit" and "VMware" during first episode.
VMware installs its own kernel modules into the running kernel. Red Hat does not support the usage of kernel modules supplied from external sources. Please let the VMware people know about this problem, so they can look into it, and hopefully fix it. I note that you're also using an Nvidia video card. If you are using Nvidia's closed source proprietary binary only video driver, Red Hat also does not support that, for the same reasons. If so, be sure to also inform Nvidia of the problem, in case it is related to their driver, so they can fix any problems their driver may be causing also.
After living with this problem for some time now, it does not appear to be related to any specific application program. The last two times the system froze I was running only "gedit", krellm, and a terminal window. Just now, when attempting to write this update it froze again, without any apparent provocation. I have attached two files, one containing a list of running processes and the other, a list of loaded modules. It does appear that the NVida video driver is installed. These files are located in /usr/src/linux-2.4.9-13/drivers/video/riva: ==> accel.c <== Copyright 2000 Jindrich Makovicka, Ani Joshi ==> fbdev.c <== Copyright 1999-2000 Jeff Garzik ==> nv4ref.h <== Copyright 1993-1998 NVIDIA, Corporation. ==> nvreg.h <== Copyright 1996-1997 David J. McKay ==> riva_hw.c <== Copyright 1993-1999 NVIDIA, Corporation. ==> riva_hw.h <== Copyright 1993-1999 NVIDIA, Corporation. ==> riva_tbl.h <== Copyright 1993-1999 NVIDIA, Corporation. This is the default driver from the RedHat installation. If you think this could be the source of this lock up, please point me to where I can find a less troublesome driver. I don't think it's likely VMware is causing this. I've installed the newest 3.0 software and built drivers on this machine during the setup. Besides, I haven't heard of anyone else complaining of system freeze from VMware. Is it possible that my compiler is the problem? I'm using the compiler installed by default during the system installation with whatever updates have been available. While building the VMware modules, I got this warning: As of October 2001, Gcc 2.96 is not yet a supported compiler by the Linux kerneldevelopment team. Have a look at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes to get thecorrect compiler installed. This script will take into consideration the CC environment variable. Do you want to go with gcc version 2.96 compiler ? If the problem is the compiler, why do we have a problematic compiler packaged with the 7.2 distribution? If the problem is the video driver, why do we have a problematic compiler installed by default? I would appreciate any information or recommendations you might offer. Thank you for your help! --Cal Webster
Created attachment 37141 [details] Running processes in typical session.
Created attachment 37142 [details] Kernel modules loaded during typical session.
As I mentioned earlier, VMware is not supported by Red Hat Linux. What this means in a larger sense, is that, if one encounters a bug, system lockup, or similar, either while using VMware, after using VMware, or after any of the VMware kernel modules have even been loaded once, any problems encountered at all from that point on, are not supported by Red Hat. We also do not officially support installing Red Hat Linux into a VMware virtual machine. We encourage users experiencing bugs with external kernel modules having been used, to reconfigure their system to disable all external modules, reboot, and run their system in the default supplied configuration to reproduce the problem. This holds true for any external software providing its own kernel modules, or directly accessing hardware. >As of October 2001, Gcc 2.96 is not yet a supported compiler by >the Linux kernel development team. Have a look at >/usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes to get the correct compiler >installed. This script will take into consideration the >CC environment variable. Do you want to go with gcc version 2.96 >compiler ? The compiler supported and used officially by Red Hat Linux for all 7.x releases, is gcc 2.96, which has been used to compile _all_ of the Red Hat 2.4.x kernels, which subsequently pass intense cerberus testing, as well as other Quality Assurance testing before our kernels are released officially. The 2.2 series kernels in 7.0 were build with the older egcs due to kernel bugs (not compiler bugs). ftp.kernel.org shows the datestamp for the 2.4.10 kernel as: -rw-r--r-- 1 korg korg 22911818 Sep 23 18:30 linux-2.4.10.tar.bz2 Here is an excerpt from the linux/Documentation/Changes: The Red Hat gcc 2.96 compiler subtree can also be used to build this tree. You should ensure you use gcc-2.96-74 or later. gcc-2.96-54 will not build the kernel correctly. So, clearly the VMware statement is not accurate. Either way however, whatever compiler you use, or VMware recommends to use, is what you need to use to get support from VMware, using their technical support channels. Red Hat does not support VMware. The following document may also be of use for general gcc 2.96 information: http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html We absolutely are interested in knowing about bugs encountered in valid supported software configurations that do not include unsupported add on kernel modules. If you can reproduce this bug, as described above, without having loaded or used VMware from a fresh reboot, then we can look into this further, and encourage you to reopen the report, with any new updated info. Also, since VMware is involved, it would be a good idea to contact their technical support and/or bug tracker, to inform them of the problem as well and ensure that they can track any software bugs that may possibly be found in their product. Hope this helps.