I emerged & compiled gentoo-dev-2.6.7 . Since then, on occasion, I get seemingly random crashes. Mostly there is nothing in /var/log/messages, though this time there was, indicating the kernel dereferenced a NULL pointer. The log indicates it's in X (I have xfree-4.3.0-r5); I get warnings from dmesg telling me that X might be accessing the hardware directly and occasionally the X server unpredictably stops, or individual programs in X suddenly segfault (this has happened to gnome-terminal, gkrellm, gaim, firefox and nicotine). Dmesg also warns about spurious IRQ7 interrupts. I searched the database but the last bugs I found that sounded similar were for 2.4-series kernels and involved ACPI, which I have disabled. Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: (this is an erratic problem and doesn't happen following a specific action.) Portage 2.0.50-r9 (default-x86-2004.0, gcc-3.3.2, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r0, 2.6.7-gentoo-r9) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.7-gentoo-r9 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3000+ Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 ccache version 2.3 [enabled] Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r3 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control"CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.ndlug.nd.edu/pub/gentoo/ http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo ftp://mirrors.tds.net/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X aim alsa apm avi berkdb cdr crypt cups dvd emacs encode esd foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 gtkhtml imlib java jpeg jpg libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mozilla mpeg msn ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png python quicktime readline sdl slang spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex truetype unicode x86 xml2 xmms xv yahoo zlib" I'm using syslog-ng and there doesn't seem to be an Oops file; here's the relevant part of /var/log/messages: Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000040 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth printing eip: Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth c03fdb58 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth *pde = 00000000 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Oops: 0000 [#1] Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth PREEMPT Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Modules linked in: via_agp agpgart snd_via82xx nvidia sk98lin Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth CPU: 0 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth EIP: 0060:[<c03fdb58>] Tainted: P Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth EFLAGS: 00013282 (2.6.7-gentoo-r9) Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth EIP is at unix_detach_fds+0x28/0x50 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth eax: 00000040 ebx: 0000078c ecx: f63ebf04 edx: 00000040 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth esi: f63ebe4c edi: f63ebe58 ebp: f63ebe04 esp: f63ebdf8 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Process X (pid: 7147, threadinfo=f63ea000 task=f7842bb0) Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Stack: 0000078c 0000078c f699d240 f63ebe78 c03feb92 f63ebe4c f699d240 0000078c Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth f63ebe44 c01324f1 f699d240 ef3b0e64 ef3b0f54 00000001 00000000 ffffffa1 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth 00000001 00001080 00000000 ef3b0e20 f63ebf04 0000569a 000001f4 000001f4 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Call Trace: Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c01046af>] show_stack+0x7f/0xa0 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c0104848>] show_registers+0x158/0x1b0 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c01049c9>] die+0x89/0x100 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c01112a6>] do_page_fault+0x1f6/0x57e Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c0104319>] error_code+0x2d/0x38 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c03feb92>] unix_stream_recvmsg+0x2f2/0x430 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c039e9be>] sock_aio_read+0xbe/0xd0 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c014afe9>] do_sync_read+0x89/0xc0 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c014b101>] vfs_read+0xe1/0x120 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c014b35f>] sys_read+0x3f/0x60 Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth [<c010416f>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Jul 17 23:02:26 coelacanth Code: 8b 18 4b 78 17 8d 76 00 8b 44 98 04 89 04 24 e8 44 19 00 00 (this is from dmesg): agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 8x mode spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7. atkbd.c: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program, like XFree86, might be trying access hardware directly. atkbd.c: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program, like XFree86, might be trying access hardware directly.
As you are using the nvidia driver, I'm sorry, but the kernel developers are not going to be able to help you out. But if you can reproduce this, without the nvidia driver loaded, please reopen this with the new oops message.
