bizarre messages
 

Hello all
Bizarre things happening...
Sun sparc5 170mhz, running mdk 7.1 with newly compiled kernel 2.4.17 so I can use ext3.
X/gnome/opera running
x vanishes, get a page with a message like this...

unexpected trap in kernel mode:
PANIC: k_trap - kernel mode trap type 0x00000160
trying to dump 9857 pages to dumpdev hd (1/41) at block 0, 204

This is actually someone elses' error message found on the net, googling found a page saying hardware problem, I think its my newly compiled kernel.

The bizarre thing happened next. A BSOD appeared, saying "windows", and "general protection fault". I touched the kb and opera reappeared, the system works as normal. Has anyone ever experienced this in linux? I'm keeping it running to see if it happens again

Jim

Personally I've never heard of a BSOD in linux. Especially one that says windows on it. Are you sure no one on your network is playing around with you by writing to your screen? Or maybe someone has installed a little program which simulates a BSOD.
It just sounds too fake. Normally linux logs errors to the log files not by displaying them directly on your screen. And if it is X related then X would probably crash or exit with an error. If it's non fatal the only place you would see it is the logs. If you can't find these messages in any of your log files then it's a big chance someone is having a great laugh at you.

It is odd.
Theres only me on the network, and so far as I know, I've not been hacked, firewall seems intact, no tripwire messages. Logs don't show any errors.
The new kernel build seems unstable, so I'm going back to the default for a while to see if that cures it.
I wonder if it was an opera error message.
Jim

Or maybe its some sort of a bizarre mandrake screensaver, but as the system keeps doing strange things, I'm changing kernel.

Shame and embarrasment.
 

Operator oops, kernel probably fine.
OK after trying all the screensavers in Gnome on this distro, I found one funnily enough called BSOD! As the machine has been troublesome since new kernel, I guess I was a bit trigger happy with the post.
Can't get the old kernel to work anyway, it doesn't seem to understand the e3fs, though I read that it should. Maybe its just the sparc way.
Will go and sit quietly in the corner now.
Jim

I think it would have been even funnier had you said it was the Amiga startup 'bsod'. I must admit, it's a pretty cool screensaver for the masochistic.

Oh, btw, does anyone ever remember an 'Amiga Emulator' for the PC (ran under DOS) that actually wasn't an emulator? It would look for the 'C:\WINDOWS' directory and rename all files to begin with the #. A long time ago (about 9 years ago) I took this into school because most of my friends had Amigas, and I wanted to try their games. My brother's computer had Windows under 'C:\WIN31' so the program never made a difference to his machine, but it buggered the computers at school (they weren't networked, each one was standalone, but with the same apps). He, he! Oh, I got such a rollocking for that!

If you can't get the ext3fs to work try the reiserfs. I've been using it for a while now and it's a great step upwards from my previous ext2fs.

After compiling the support into the kernel and installing the reiserfs tools. You can create the fs by doing something like:
mkreiserfs -h r5 -v 1 /dev/hda1

And you should change your fstab from entries like
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
to
/dev/hda1 / reiserfs defaults 0 0

Reading over the fstab man files, the fifth field is used by the dump command. The sixth field is used for fsck. You where getting dump errors on ext3 so maybe setting the fifth field to 0 might help. I don't know how ext3 usually should be mounted.