[PLUG] APIC errors, weird crashes

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff@purple.com>]

I set up a new machine that has been getting weird crashes.  (So far
gnome terminal, mozilla, emacs21, exim4, X, clock applet, workspace
applet, xterm, and ogg123 have crashed.)

At first I thought this was APIC related, as I saw a few kernel log
messages to this effect (see below).  But, for the most part, the
crashes have not been accompanied by anything tell-tale in the logs.
It happens often enough to be annoying but not so often that it's
feasible to sit around and watch it crash.

I'm running Debian testing, but no updates have been posted for
several days.  I'm hoping it's not hardware.

Any suggestions what might be going on or what to do?


[ The remainder of this message details the APIC kernel error, for
  those who are interested and for posterity.  Most can stop reading
  now.
]

Here is an example of the APIC kernel error, but this is relatively rare:

    jeff@astra:kernel-source-2.6.8 $ dmesg | grep -i apic
    ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
    init IO_APIC IRQs
     IO-APIC (apicid-pin) 2-0, 2-16, 2-17, 2-18, 2-19, 2-20, 2-21, 2-22, 2-23 not connected.
    Using local APIC timer interrupts.
    calibrating APIC timer ...
    ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
    number of IO-APIC #2 registers: 24.
    testing the IO APIC.......................
    IO APIC #2......
    .......    : physical APIC id: 02
    .......     : IO APIC version: 0003
    APIC error on CPU0: 00(60)
     <6>APIC error on CPU0: 60(60)
    APIC error on CPU0: 60(60)
    jeff@astra:kernel-source-2.6.8 $ uname -a
    Linux astra 2.6.8-2-686 #1 Thu May 19 17:53:30 JST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux
    jeff@astra:kernel-source-2.6.8 $

APIC errors, though, seem like they should only happen on SMP
machines.  (Cf. arch/i386/kernel/apic.c, function
smp_error_interrupt().)  My kernel is not compiled for SMP (see uname,
above) and I only have one processor.

    jeff@astra:kernel-source-2.6.8 $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
    processor       : 0
    vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
    cpu family      : 15
    model           : 4
    model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
    [...]
    jeff@astra:kernel-source-2.6.8 $ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
    processor       : 0
    jeff@astra:kernel-source-2.6.8 $

BTW, I found a cool info site here:

    http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/APIC

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>    +1 215/837-2287
 GPG fingerprint: 1A1A BA95 D082 A558 A276  63C6 16BF 8C4C 0D1D AE4B

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