[Popcon-developers] Bug#640974: After installing linux-image-2.6.32-35squeeze1 popularity-contest daily cronjob gets killed

[Bill Allombert]

On Fri, Sep 09, 2011 at 08:55:31AM +0200, Alexander Fortin wrote:
> Package: popularity-contest
> Version: 1.49
> Severity: normal
> 
> This I what I get when I run /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest:
> 
> Message from syslogd at asimov at Sep  9 08:49:07 ...
>  kernel:[41285.840016] Oops: 0000 [#5] SMP
> 
> Message from syslogd at asimov at Sep  9 08:49:07 ...
>  kernel:[41285.840016] last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/host0/target0:0:1/0:0:1:0/block/sdb/stat
> 
> Message from syslogd at asimov at Sep  9 08:49:07 ...
>  kernel:[41285.840016] Stack:
> 
> Message from syslogd at asimov at Sep  9 08:49:07 ...
>  kernel:[41285.840016] Call Trace:
> 
> Message from syslogd at asimov at Sep  9 08:49:07 ...
>  kernel:[41285.840016] Code: 48 89 df e8 e3 c2 f1 ff 31 c0 40 84 ed 49 0f 45 c4 5b 5d 41 5c c3 55 53 48 83 ec 08 48 85 f6 48 8b 6f 60 74 1a 48 3b 75 10 74 14 <48> 8b 1e 48 8d 7b 60 e8 dd 86 f3 ff 48 89 df e8 ac c2 f1 ff 48
> 
> Message from syslogd at asimov at Sep  9 08:49:07 ...
>  kernel:[41285.840016] CR2: fffffffffffffff3
> Killed
> 
> It hangs for a few seconds, then I get back a working shell.
> 
> I know it is very likely a hardware related problem, but I thought the kernel upgrade might be related

Hello Alexander,
This report suggest that your hard-disk sdb has some problem with some sectors.
/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest access most of the directories in /usr, so 
if some of them is stored in the broken sectors, then hardware trouble can happen
even if the box seems to work correctly (because the broken directories are not very
important.

You can try to do 
find /usr -depth -print
and see whether it triggers the problem and at which files.

You can also boot an older kernel and see whether you can reproduce the problem.

However, there is not much we popularity-contest maintainers can do for you,
we are not kernel experts.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe at debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.