Unable to start new processes

[Chris MacDonald]

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Mark <mhullrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 7:38 PM, Rashkae <ubuntu at tigershaunt.com> wrote:
>>
>> You're right, those are not at all what I was thinking, and should
>> certainly be up to the task at hand.  However, the errors in your dmesg
>> are what they are.  The only thing to do now is narrow down whether the
>> io errors originate in those devices or the MB.
>>
> In general, my experience has been that errors that are consistent at
> the same location tend to be the more local (though not always).  IOW,
> if it is the same location on the "disk" that gets the errors
> consistently, chances are higher that it is the "disk" that's at
> fault, and not the m/b.
>
> Motherboard errors usually manifest either in much stranger ways (like
> random errors that don't seem to have a pattern other than failure) or
> much more consistent and highly predictable ways (like, say, a whole
> stripe of disk that is consistently bad unless you move it to another
> interface, as if a path through the i/o port was bad for all accesses,
> or it won't power up).  There are also cracked chip/solder issues
> which are a little harder to pin down but they are in some sense more
> predictable because of their patterns.
>
> Start as close as possible to the problem and fan out from there.  In
> this case, it looks like it's your flash drive.  One simple
> verification of this would be to try it on a different host.
>
> Mark
>
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When I'd originally posted about the problem, it was occurring on
D945GCLF2s, same RAM, same flash drives, but 10.04. On that exact same
hardware I've installed 9.10 and haven't had a problem, those machines
have been online for over two months straight. Running 10.04, I'd be
lucky if they'd last two days. These were also formatted ext3 (both
9.10 and 10.04). Now I'm testing on D510MOs, same RAM, same flash
drives, 10.10, ext4 and I'm experiencing the same problem.

Part of the reason I started on the Ubuntu users list was because the
error was only appearing with 10.04. Now with 10.10 producing errors
as well, I'm still inclined to believe it was something in the kernel
changing after 9.10. I'm setting up a test that will put a platter HDD
in an enclosure on the USB bus to see if perhaps it's something in the
kernel's usb implementation that disagrees with the hardware.

In any event, I've got some test cases to work on, I'll set those up
to run tomorrow and I'll post back as soon as something fails. :)

Chris