[ltp] kernel: memory.c:83: bad pmd

[Vivek]

On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Jim Peden wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I have an A20 Thinkpad running Redhat 7.2 (linux-2.4.7-10). Just last
> night I started getting this error: "kernel: memory.c:83: bad pmd". Then
> the I get a kernel panic and so on. It has been running 7.2 for months
> with a problem. I started thinking it was the hard drive. I had an old
> Redhat 6.2 hard driving I had pulled out of my thinkpad, the hard drive
> that came with the Thinkpad. I installed the old drive and I get the SAME
> thing.
>
> Does anyone have ANY clues on this one???????

Well, a quick dive into the kernel source turns up the fact that the
pmd functions are to do with page tables: I reckon ( and a quick trawl
via google of the lkml seems to back this up ) that you may have some
bad memory there.

Do you have some other memory you can swap in to check this?

Also, you can boot up the machine, shut down all the services you
don't need (X, any databases or webservers, the network and so on),
and see if you can get through 3 or 4 consecutive kernel compiles
with "make -j 2 bzImage" w/o triggering a panic : If you can, it
probably isn't a memory problem.