Chris Miller wrote:
Hello, I've got an EPIA-M series motherboard in a system that has locked up twice under random conditions. Nothing is logged to the console or logs, the system just hangs.
The system is installed with CentOS 4.4 and running the 2.6.9-42.0.8.EL i686 kernel. I am aware that older C3 processors had the CMOV problem, but that is resolved in the later boards (procinfo below). I've seen a few posts about similar problems, but it's not clear whether this is a bad board, or if there's an issue with the kernel.
cpuspeed was running, I've since disabled and stopped the service as it's been rumored to cause problems. This was mentioned in this bug report that is still open :
http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=1270
Can anyone confirm that there are no known problems with the VIA C3 Nehemiah Model 9 and CentOS, or if some (kernel) tweaks are required to make these systems stable?
Try running a large rsync to system with "hdparm -d" DMA turned on. I've read a thread on Via's forums that some of their southbridge chipsets do not handle DMA contention and freak out. Turn DMA off using hdparm and try the rsync again. I was able to get around this by turning dma off for the hard drive.
http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=60131&...
I've had a sales engineer that works a lot with Via systems say something to me of this topic:
Are you using any additional peripherals (wireless LAN, USB devices, etc...)? I've found that the DMA issues are usually triggered when a DMA-enabled PCI device enters the picture, however, I have seen reports of these problems arising in situations where considerable network data transfer occurs simultaneously with heavy disk activity.
Jed