I killed it today :D

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I killed it today :D

Postby jiml8 » Nov 7th, '13, 09:29

This is not a complaint, I'm just telling a story.

My Mageia 3 64 bit system crashed today, for the very first time since I upgraded to it back in July. I have rebooted the system a couple of times since July, mostly because some work was being done on the house and the electrical system was offline a few times for long enough that my UPS would not last, so I had to shut the machine down, but other than that it is up 24/7 and until today I have never crashed it, regardless of what I did to it.

I have been doing some work on the embedded ARM processor in an RF modem for a client (new product development), and I have been doing this development in my Windows 7 virtual machine, running in VMWare Workstation, hosted on my Mageia 3 system. I'm doing it in Windows because some of the development environment software is only available in Windows (mainly the software to handle the ICE).

So, I have three connections to this ARM I am working on: A USB connection to an ICE that connects to the JTAG port on the ARM for low-level work on the processor and for uploading programs, a USB connection to a USB/serial adapter that connects to the serial debug console on the ARM board, and an ethernet connection through my LAN to the web-based remote administration software on the ARM. The USB connections are passed through the Mageia host and connected to the Windows 7 VM, and the ethernet connection is routed through IPTables and the VMWare virtual networking environment to the Windows 7 VM.

It has all been working great for the last couple of months. But today, I was exercising a new variant of the program on the ARM and suddenly the Mageia system crossed its eyes and stopped responding. The display went black and I had no control. I tried to ssh in from my Android phone, and that didn't work. So I had no choice but to hit the reset button. *sigh*. I have no idea what happened to it; as is the usual case in such crashes, there was nothing in the logs.

Well, this system had been making a liar of me. I have always said I could kill any system and until today I had not managed to kill this one. My faith in my ability to tear up systems is now somewhat restored. :P
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Re: I killed it today :D

Postby marja » Nov 7th, '13, 16:34

Sounds pretty complicated what you're doing with the ARM and all the connections. I hope, that if the crash repeats itself, that you'll find out what exactly causes it. :-)
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Re: I killed it today :D

Postby jiml8 » Nov 7th, '13, 20:56

What I'm doing with the system really is pretty complicated, and I have been hugely pleased at how well it has all been working. As for having it crash again so I can figure it out...nah. I would prefer it not crash again. After all, when it crashes, I can't get my work done.

For all I know a cosmic ray flipped a bit in RAM and that caused it. If that was the case, it probably won't happen again for at least many months. But I'll still take the credit for being able to kill ANY system...at least occasionally... :D
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Re: I killed it today :D

Postby doktor5000 » Nov 7th, '13, 21:46

jiml8 wrote:I tried to ssh in from my Android phone, and that didn't work. So I had no choice but to hit the reset button. *sigh*.

You didn't try Magic SysRq?
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Re: I killed it today :D

Postby marja » Nov 8th, '13, 12:32

doktor5000 wrote:You didn't try Magic SysRq?


Did you see that in Cauldron (but not yet in Mageia 3, I think.... don't really remember :? ), using the SysRq key combinations doesn't work?

To enable them, make the following file /etc/sysctl.d/51-setsysrq.conf
Code: Select all
# this file should be named 51-setsysrq.conf
# and go into /etc/sysctl.d/
# it enables using the sysrq key combinations

kernel.sysrq=1
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Re: I killed it today :D

Postby jiml8 » Nov 9th, '13, 19:42

doktor5000 wrote:
jiml8 wrote:I tried to ssh in from my Android phone, and that didn't work. So I had no choice but to hit the reset button. *sigh*.

You didn't try Magic SysRq?


Keyboard was non-responsive.
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