b0rked, very b0rked...

[phpgeek]

ok.. I've been having some weird ass problems with linux lately, but I've finally found a reason for one of the screwy things...

ok, I've got a moderatley large collection of music, around 6.5GB. now, most of it is from my bro, and we both don't have completely the same taste in music, so I don't want all the music he has. I've edited down my xmms playlist, so that I only have the music I can stand/like.

right now, all the mp3s are sitting on a fat32 partition, which I don't like because I'm scared they're gonna get corrupted or something. So I wrote a nice little php shell script to go through my playlist, and only copy the songs I want. The script works perfectly, but EVERY SINGLE time I've run it, the kernel has given me a "paging fault" part way through(and it's never on a certain song, just anywhere through it)

My current guess is something to do with the ram/swap. right now I'm running just on ram w/o swap(and it's fine, 256MB).

Or, another thing that might be going screwy, is that I'm running mandrake 8.1 with gcc 2.96. I've heard and been told by some configure programs and gcc 2.96 itself is b0rked, and I'm running on a custom compiled kernel. but unless they compiled the distro kernel with gcc 2.96, then it's not that, cause I tried running my script on 2.4.8mdk(IIRC), and it still gave me the damn "paging fault".

Yet another thing could be, is that the partition I'm trying to copy onto is broken, although I've already got a bunch of mp3s on there.


COULD SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!?????

This is really starting to bug me, as there have been other weird little problems cropping up as well, but this is something I can nail down to a definitive source, so any ideas/help welcome!

[kenshi]

I think paging faults are always memory related. Maybe when you're copying them, it's filling memory with the virtual filesystem junk and that's causing it. Also, unless you're very confident your program isn't flawed, post your code. My guess is that it's from not having a swap partition though.

[phpgeek]

I think paging faults are always memory related. Maybe when you're copying them, it's filling memory with the virtual filesystem junk and that's causing it. Also, unless you're very confident your program isn't flawed, post your code. My guess is that it's from not having a swap partition though.

swap was on when I was doing this though.. then I tried it without it, but it still didn't work anyway. I would give you the actual error, but I don't have a copy of it

anywho, here's the script.

<?php
set_time_limit(0);
$mp3list = file('/win4/lists/linux.m3u');
while(list($line, $mp3) = each($mp3list)) {
    $mp3 = trim($mp3);
    $mp3file = ereg_replace("/win4/mp3/", "", $mp3);
    copy($mp3, '/mp3/'.$mp3file);
    echo "Copying" . $mp3 . "...\n";
    }
?>

this could also be a case of bad RAM
a couple of months ago my pc really started acting weird and i tried almost everything to fix it but nothing helped. until a friend of mine told me that i should try replacing the RAM just to see if it might have something to do with it. So i replaced the RAM and suddenly all my weird pc problems were gone.

[phpgeek]

this could also be a case of bad RAM
a couple of months ago my pc really started acting weird and i tried almost everything to fix it but nothing helped. *until a friend of mine told me that i should try replacing the RAM just to see if it might have something to do with it. *So i replaced the RAM and suddenly all my weird pc problems were gone.

that's what I was thinking too... I have no idea how to figure out if it's that though. I bought a stcik of ram and put it in myself, and it was a pain in the ass to just get in there...

but, I might try taking it out, and see if my problems go away.. if they do, it's back to futureshop the ram goes

[kenshi]

Now that you mention it, I think it's bad RAM too. Take each one out individually.

[phpgeek]

well, this is where I get confused

here's the output from free -m:

       total    used    free   shared  buffers   cached
Mem:      249    239     10     0     10     92
-/+ buffers/cache:    136    113
Swap:      0     0     0

there are two sticks of 128MB each in there, and it's gotta be using both, so if one of them were bad, wouldn't it be screwing up now?

[kenshi]

I wouldn't trust that output while X is running. It has seemed to be off in my experience. And if it is correct, then your problem is probably that you're running out of memory.

[phpgeek]

alright, I got more info, part of the actual error I get... now that I remember, I don't know where I got paging fault from, but anywho...

the first line goes like this:
"unable to handle kernel NULL pointer"

then a bunch of stuff, in which procces: php is named, then the last line:

"<0>Kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrupt handler!
In interrupt handley - not syncing"

I hope someone understands this, cause I sure as hell don't

[phpgeek]

ok, just tried running the script in runlevel 3. the free -m output I was getting was pretty close to nil before I started the script. then I started the script, and everything went to hell. a bunch of progs, like nmbd, kupdated, etc, went and gave me an error something like this:
"Unable to handle kernel paging request..."

so, it's back to the paging... however, unless it's using both sticks of ram at the same time, it's not that, cause the most amount of ram being used before it totally hung was around 55-60MB.

if no one has any new ideas, I'll probably try taking the new stick of ram out and see if that still happens, then I'll try it with the original stick. But I don't really want to do that, cause the ram is right at the back of where the hd's are mounted, so I gotta go through a bunch of ide cables to get to it