[CentOS] APIC error on Intel Atom CPU, CentOS 5.x

Tue Mar 16 07:27:20 UTC 2010
Timo Schoeler <timo.schoeler at riscworks.net>

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thus JohnS spake:
> On Mon, 2010-03-15 at 19:13 -0700, Bill Campbell wrote:
>> I am seeing ``APIC error on CPU3: 60(60)'' warnings from dmesg
>> periodically on a CentOS 5.4 box, kernel 2.6.18-164.11.1.el5.
>> The CPU is an Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 @ 1.60GHz.  I am not a
>> hardware type, and don't have a clue what this means.
> 
> Try "noapic" on the kernel boot parameter.  Also if that don't work out
> try "acpi=off"

Hi,

just jumpin' in: I too have an Atom-based machine which runs *rock
solid* with ''noapic'' as parameter, and crashes without.

However, I've got another machine based on exactly the same hardware
(board, CPU, memory, HD, everything) and the same BIOS config -- running
flawlessly without the parameter given.

>> This is occurring while an rsync-3.0.4 process is receiving data
>> sent by a machine running rsync-3.0.7 (I just updated the CentOS
>> box to rsync-3.0.7 since noticing that it was a bit dated).  This
>> is the only significant load on this machine at this time.
> 
> Maybe your running out of kernel threads and or APIC can't distribute
> interrupts across the CPU.  Or APIC don't like your motherboard/cpu
> under stress.

My impression was that it was not load (I tortured both machines running
BOINC for a few weeks) but traffic. Thus, I suspect the (on board) NIC
to be a bit... crappy (IIRC it was Realtek)? I've always wanted to test
it with a reasonable NIC.

>> This machine has locked up requiring a hard reset twice while
>> this rsync process has been running at night with no problems at
>> other times.
> 
>  Most of the times I have seen hard lockups is with interrupt problems
> of distribution of them and failing hardware.
> 
> John

Timo

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