Arch Linux

Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

Since last friday, my laptop's been having some trouble with kernel panics. They occur seemingly randomly:
- The first one occurred last friday when I was recording something with kaffeine using an USB DVB-T receiver;
- The second one occurred yesterday, while I was running some Ruby scripts to do some CPU-heavy calculations;
- The third one occurred today, just as soon as I'd logged in and started xchat;
- The fourth one occurred half an hour or so after that, when I was just editing some text files in gedit.

I don't really see a pattern in this

The problem is that there is no trace of these panics in my log files (I checked pretty much everything in /var/log). Also, during all 4 occasions I was using X, so I couldn't see any output that might have been printed to the console.

After the 3rd panic, I enabled magic SysRq keys in /etc/sysctl.conf. Then, when the fourth panic occurred, I tried some of the key combinations, but they didn't seem to do anything. I think this is because I have to access SysRq by pressing the Fn key + Print screen, or something.

What I'm doing now is pretty much staring at my laptop's screen while in console mode, and just waiting for another panic to happen. However, I've been doing this for at least 5 hours, and it hasn't panicked since. This leads me to believe that it's got something to do with my graphics card (I use compiz), but I can't really be sure.

So in the end, I still don't know what's wrong

I have a Dell XPS M1530 laptop. I just -Syu'd yesterday, so I'm running kernel 2.6.27.8, but it still panics. It also panicked before, I think I was using 2.6.27.7 then. Not entirely sure about the last 7, but it was definitely 2.6.27.
It has a nVidia Geforce 8600M GT graphics card and a broadcom 4312 wireless chip. These are my main suspects, because I use proprietary drivers for both (nvidia 177.82 and broadcom-wl 5.10.27.6).

Anyways, my question: anybody have any clues on how to diagnose the cause of these panics? It would be ideal if I would be able to use X as usual, but could still access the information printed to the console after a panic somehow...
I've been thinking about hooking up an old CRT monitor to it, but I'm not sure if it's possible to run X on only one monitor, and I'm guessing it isn't. Correct me if I'm wrong, please

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Zuranox

Member

Registered: 2008-01-18

Posts: 8

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

Hi,

I get similar crash on my system, all i see is this message in /var/log/errors.log :

Dec 17 22:57:03 cobra pci 0000:03:00.0: BAR 0: can't allocate resource
Dec 17 22:57:03 cobra pci 0000:05:00.0: BAR 3: can't allocate resource

Seems my graphic card has a problem ? i get blank screen during boot sometimes too since 2 days.

Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

I don't have any of those error messages, so I'm affraid your problem is a different one...

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St. Ares

Member

Registered: 2008-12-02

Posts: 19

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

This is odd, because I just got my XPS 1530 working fine for the first time. My problem seemed to be linked to the iwl4965 wireless driver, which you don't use because you have broadcom. However, for the longest time I thought it was my graphics driver, and I used to use the proprietary driver in the other distros I tried. As far as I know, I still use the nvidia driver that the company supports, but it hasn't caused me any problems.

Since my graphics work, I might look into that wireless driver if I were you. I have friends who own broadcom 43xx cards, and I know that setting them up to work in linux can be a pain in the rear, but when they use the drivers used with ubuntu everything seems to work just fine.

I know a lot of XPS users are having kernel panics. I turned my back on linux a few times because of them, all it would do is flash two lights and I couldn't use keyboard or anything.

My nvidia driver is also 177.82. I also have the 8600GT.

Last edited by St. Ares (2008-12-18 06:48:27)

Zuranox

Member

Registered: 2008-01-18

Posts: 8

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

It seems that my problem disappear by downgrading nvidia driver from 177.xx to 173.xx, is 177 dropping geforce 7600 support ?

Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

Since my graphics work, I might look into that wireless driver if I were you. I have friends who own broadcom 43xx cards, and I know that setting them up to work in linux can be a pain in the rear, but when they use the drivers used with ubuntu everything seems to work just fine.

I know a lot of XPS users are having kernel panics. I turned my back on linux a few times because of them, all it would do is flash two lights and I couldn't use keyboard or anything.

My nvidia driver is also 177.82. I also have the 8600GT.

Thanks man.
It's really quite odd because they suddenly came on last friday, hadn't had any trouble whatsoever before that.
before I settled on broadcom-wl I tried b43, but I never got that working. Maybe I should give that a try again...

Maybe I should also run memtest for a few hours, you never know. And if that doesn't bring clarity I'll just start using Windows for the time being If that also crashes, it's a hardware problem.

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St. Ares

Member

Registered: 2008-12-02

Posts: 19

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

Yea what was most frustrating about my problem is that I knew it was drivers. Windows worked fine, but linux didn't. And that is never good for someone trying to convince people that linux is better than windows.

I don't remember for sure if my friend got b43 working or not. I'm trying to ask them what worked, because I just remember them telling me that they simply did exactly what a certain website told them to do, and I know that isn't much help for you. As far as I know though, it was b43 that they had been trying to get working. I would take a look at the compat-wireless project website because I know they have a guide there for setting up broadcom 43xx

Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

Thanks, will check it out!
I updated broadcom-wl last night (recompiled the package) and I haven't had any panics since then, but that doesn't really mean anything seeing as the first two were half a week apart... I'll try and find that guide and see where that gets me.

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Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

Note: Broadcom has used some of the BCM43XX designations for more than one flavor of card. To tell for sure if your card is supported, use the command 'lspci -n' and find the line that has the string "14e4:XXXX'. If XXXX is 4301, 4307, 4311, 4312, 4318, 4319, 4320, 4321, 4324, or 4325, the card is supported. All others are NOT supported.

Mine says 4315, so unfortunately b43 doesn't support it

that means i'm stuck using broadcom-wl... or ndiswrapper. meh.

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St. Ares

Member

Registered: 2008-12-02

Posts: 19

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

hmm...thats too bad that the driver doesn't work for that card. Ndiswrapper is an option. I asked my friend about exactly where he found information. I just went there and it showed me the same information you saw. Sorry to send you to a dead end. I know ndiswrapper is a possible workaround, but I'm sorry to say I don't know enough about it to be much help.

Sander

Member

Registered: 2006-02-26

Posts: 138

Re: Diagnosing the cause of a kernel panic

That's alright man, thanks for everything you've done so far. I'll figure it out eventually

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