From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.9-31 i686; Nav) Description of problem: The netdump-client hangs for a long time even when idle_timeout is specified. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Load the netconsole.o module with an idle_timeout specified 2. Stop the netdump-server 3. Force a kernel crash Actual Results: The netdump-client waits for a very long time (probably years) Expected Results: The netdump-client should timeout, and the machine should reboot. Additional info: This is due to a compare bug at line 375 in netconsole.c. Here is a patch; 375c375 < + if (((t1 - t0) >> 20) > mhz_cycles * (unsigned long long)idle_timeout) { --- > + if (((t1 - t0) >> 20) > (unsigned long long)(mhz * idle_timeout)) { The time difference is divided by ~1000000 to get MHz AND the mhz_cycles is the clock in MHz timer 1000000 to get Hz. Either one of these should be done, not both. In the correction above I use the original clock in mhz. A printk in this code gives; idle_timeout = 5, t0 = 33318304946, t1 = 37590067912 (4073) > (1750000000) where the last numbers is used in the compare. My machine was 350Mhz, 350*5*1000000=1750000000
The line number (350) was wrong. It was actually in the netdump.patch file not in netconsole.c. The correct line number in netconsole.c is; 169.
This problem was fixed long ago in AS2.1. Larry Woodman