ITEM: U3395L

888 crash in pw-syscall (Oracle kernel extension)

Env:    3.2.5.
.Desc:  System crashed with 888-102-700-0c0.
.Action:        While trying to look at the dump, the system crashed again with
        the same codes.  When we rebooted, as soon as the customer
        logged in, it crashed again.  We booted into service mode to
        read the dump:
.[pw-syscall:timeout]
[pw-syscall:ps_wait]
\
[pw-syscall:pw_wait]
\
.This crash was caused by a call to the kernel service timeout() in
the function pw_wait() which is part of a kernel extension called
pw-syscall.  The function timeout() requires a callout table entry
to be allocated by timeoutcf() before timeout() is called.  There
are no callout table entries allocated when timeout() is called
and this is causing the system to crash.
.The final resolution was the eliminatin of duplicate entries between 
/etc/inittab and /etc/rc.oracle.
The following entries were commented out in the rc.oracle file:
    \# /etc/loadext /etc/pw-syscall
    \# /etc/loadext /etc/adspc
    \# /etc/adspcinit
It seems that due to these duplicate kernel extensions running that
an enormous amount of memory was being used and prevented Oracle 
from allocating any memory, resulting in the execution of 
pw_wait:timeout() function.
.This same problem also occurred when a bad nameserver was defined 
on the server resulting in a time delay, in network and oracle 
processes, which crashed the system the same way.
/etc/resolv.conf file was deleted to fix this situation.
.NOTE: This seems to only happen with a server running a full-use
      Oracle license.
.NEXT
cc



Support Line: 888 crash in pw-syscall (Oracle kernel extension) ITEM: U3395L

Dated: May 1995 Category: N/A

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