The first thing I come to think of right off is that you may have some system-level program incompatibility. You may want to read the Documentation/Changes file in the Linux source tree to see if you have the required versions of these programs. For reference, here is the part I think you should have more than just a quick look at:
Code:
o Gnu C 2.95.3 # gcc --version
o Gnu make 3.78 # make --version
o binutils 2.12 # ld -v
o util-linux 2.10o # fdformat --version
o module-init-tools 0.9.10 # depmod -V
o e2fsprogs 1.29 # tune2fs
o jfsutils 1.1.3 # fsck.jfs -V
o reiserfsprogs 3.6.3 # reiserfsck -V 2>&1|grep reiserfsprogs
o xfsprogs 2.1.0 # xfs_db -V
o pcmcia-cs 3.1.21 # cardmgr -V
o quota-tools 3.09 # quota -V
o PPP 2.4.0 # pppd --version
o isdn4k-utils 3.1pre1 # isdnctrl 2>&1|grep version
o nfs-utils 1.0.5 # showmount --version
o procps 3.1.13 # ps --version
o oprofile 0.5.3 # oprofiled --version
Not meeting the above requirements may cause the system to act weirdly or possibly not work at all. Furthermore, I assume you have checked the logs after your hackbench sessions to see if there are any curious messages there.
Håkan
