[CentOS] EDAC Kernel Panic 2.6.9-78 and above

Mon Oct 19 21:52:06 UTC 2009
Chris Miller <centos2 at scratchspace.com>

I've got a production system running CentOS 4 that was rock solid
until I upgraded from 2.6.9-55 to 2.6.9-78.0.13 (now running
2.6.9-89.0.11). The system now crashes intermittently after a few
weeks. I finally caught the panic message :

EDAC MC0: INTERNAL ERROR: channel-b out of range (4 >= 4)
Kernel panic - not syncing: MC0: Uncorrected Error

Looking at the kernel changelog, I see that EDAC support was added
for the Intel 5000 chipset in 2.6.9-68.20.EL which this server runs.

I'm trying to determine if this is a potential memory issue, or is
this related to some other hardware item. Also considering disabling
EDAC in the kernel (is "noedac" a valid option?) as a last resort. I
will run memtest86+ on the server as soon as possible to check the
memory, just formulating my game plan if it's something else.

Thoughts?

Chris