[mythtv-users] New Hardware Build Troubleshooting (Possible XFS Kernel Bug?)

f-myth-users at media.mit.edu f-myth-users at media.mit.edu
Thu Jun 4 02:37:52 UTC 2009


If this is a new build, what makes you think this has anything to do
with software?  I'd check your RAM and power supply first.  (Since
you say it tends to hard-lock on heavy disk access, I'm suspicious
of one of your power supply rails, but really, it could even be poor
heatsinking on a northbridge or something.)

First, run memtest86+ for a day or so and make sure you get zero
errors.  This doesn't mean your RAM is good, but if you get any errors
at all, either your RAM is bad or there's something incompatible
between it and your motherboard.

Turn off CPU scaling.  I've seen RAM bugs with this.  Unlikely, but if
the problem goes away, you have something.

If those succeed, try building the simplest filesystem you can (maybe
ext3? ext2?) but leave the same number of disks spinning to load the
power supply, and then try repeatedly compiling gcc and/or the kernel
from it.  Put it in a script and run it for a day.  I guarantee you
that you're not going to be finding ext2 kernel bugs.  (Of course,
just because it works there doesn't mean it's XFS' fault, but you see
where I'm going here.  You seem to be jumping to the most annoying
conclusions about what might be wrong first.)


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