kernel panics at google

[H. Peter Anvin]

Followup to:  <200001250315.TAA11520 en giraffe.corp.google.com>
By author:    David desJardins <desj en google.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Update: We (Google) set /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_retrans_collapse to "0"
> on our webservers.  Now, instead of a kernel panic, they seem to
> spontaneously reboot without any errors or explanation in
> /var/log/messages.  For us, this is a significant improvement over the
> previous sitation: at least we don't have to manually reboot them.  But
> it still leaves unanswered the question of what is causing it.
> 
> It also seems that the reboots are now happening significantly less
> often than the crashes did.
> 
> Any suggestion on how we can collect more information about why the
> machines are rebooting?
> 

By the way, if you set /proc/sys/kernel/panic to a nonzero value (it's
a seconds count) panics will reboot the machine after N seconds.
Unfortunately it's a dirty reboot, but it's helluva lot better than a
hang for a production server.

     -hpa

-- 
<hpa en transmeta.com> at work, <hpa en zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."

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