shutdown does not work under suse 9.1 2425

addressed the mbuttes incomp.os.linux.miscas follows...:

There it is. An "Oops", which is short for "out of process space". Looks like you hit a kernel bug.

Usually it's a kernel bug. It's severe enough if you can reproduce it often enough. ;-)

No, it's short for "out of process space". There is also "Oom", which is "out of memory".

Yes... That is called "debugging info"... ;-)

That is correct.

Because it's a bug? ;-)

SuSE 9.1 is old, and stock distribution kernels are almost always a few kernel generations older than the current stable branch atkernel.org.

If this problem occurs too often, try fetching a new kernel fromkernel.org. They come as compressed tarballs. Download such a tarball - click on the "F" for "full sources", not on the kernel version number! - to your home directory somewhere, unpack it, read the documentation in the root of the newly created directory, edit theMakefileto set your own version information in theEXTRAVERSIONfield if required, configure the kernel and install it.

If you've never done this before, there are various methods one can use for configuring a kernel. If you're working from within a terminal in a graphical user interface environment, you can use either...

make xconfig

... or...

make gconfig

... to respectively bring up a Qt- or GTK-based configuration utility. You can also do the same thing in character mode via...

make menuconfig

Another approach is to use...

make config

... which will ask you questions in an interactive manner, to which you answer with the usual "Y" for "support compiled into the kernel itself", "N" for "no kernel support for this item", "M" for "support for this item compiled as a separate loadable module" or an eventual value where needed - e.g. a default codepage, the number of CPU's you want to support in an SMP-enabled kernel, et al.

The simplest form of configuration of a newer kernel than the one you're running is...

make oldconfig

This does however require that there is a configuration file for your present kernel in *-boot* or in the kernel itself - only available in 2.6 kernels - in which case the kernel's.configwill be accessable as agzip'edtext file in *-proc-config.gz.*

This configuration option will only ask you questions about kernel configuration items not currently exiting in the kernel you're running and will take over any already existing values.

However, should you opt for the latter, then I would still recommend one of the other options afterwards, even if only to set your exact CPU type and - if appropriate - select one of theHIGHMEMsupport options.

After you're done configuring, compile the kernel, as follows...:

make bzImage && make modules

Lastly, install the kernel into place - a new menu entry should be automatically created in your bootloader configuration. You'll need to be root to do this last step...:

make modulesinstall install

(... with themakeparameters in the above order).

Hope this helps... ;-)

P.S.: If you're experiencing stability problems on AMD-based systems - notably with VIA chipsets - then try pbutting...

noapic nolapic

... to the kernel as a boot parameter - either manually or via the kernel'sappendline in your bootloader configuration file - and see whether that changes anything.

-- With kind regards,

*Aragorn* (registered GNU-Linux user #223157)