Hi people, I wonder if anyone can help me diagnose this problem. I was using my machine as normal, listening to some music and then it crashed. So, I rebooted and saw messages like

./hotplug.functions line 127: 687 Segmentation fault $MODPROBE $MODULE (can't remember the rest, but it was some stuff to do with /dev/null).

There were about 5 or 6 of these messages. When I rebooted again, there was an additional one, informing me about a segmentation fault in /etc/hotplug/usb.rc. I couldn't get the full text of these messages, since they weren't on the screen for long.

Any ideas as to what could be wrong? I'm using Slackware 10.2 with the 2.4.31 kernel. As I say, I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, heh.

Edit: I checked /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages, but didn't see anything unusual in either file.

Edit: system specs in case they're relevant:

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard
1 GB PC2700 DDR RAM
20 GB Western Digital HDD (/dev/hda, Windows XP on here)
80 GB Seagate Barracuda HDD (/dev/hdb, Slack and FreeBSD on here)
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 256 MB AGP
Samsung DVD-ROM drive

All help will be appreciated, thanks .

Try looking at "dmesg".
It may contain useful info too.

Also, it seems that it's related to USB devices. Maybe you can stop the machine, unplug any USB devices, then boot it. After that, reconnect the USB devices one by one and see which gives you the problem.
Or something like that.

There's nothing unusual in dmesg, apart from this:

ALSA ../alsa-kernel/pci/via82xx.c:583: codec_read: codec 0 is not valid [0xfe000
0]
ALSA ../alsa-kernel/pci/via82xx.c:583: codec_read: codec 0 is not valid [0xfe000
0]
ALSA ../alsa-kernel/pci/via82xx.c:583: codec_read: codec 0 is not valid [0xfe000
0]
ALSA ../alsa-kernel/pci/via82xx.c:583: codec_read: codec 0 is not valid [0xfe000
0]

Also, I didn't have any USB devices plugged in at the time :/. The seg faults didn't happen this morning so that's good I guess.

This has just happened again. Does anyone else have any more suggestions? The full segmentation fault error messages look like

./hotplug.functions line 127: 687 Segmentation fault $MODPROBE $MODULE > /dev/null 2 > &1.

The only USB device I use is a memory stick, but that isn't plugged in right now. My mouse is USB, but I have a USB to PS/2 adapter and have always used that.

This is my main machine, so hopefully someone can help me with this!

Could you plug in the memory stick and reboot? Just to be sure that the error isn't USB related at all,
as you suggest.

Also, you could try finding the hotplug.functions (somewhere in /etc/hotplug probably), go to line 127
and add an
just before line 127.
That may give a clue as to which kernel module the script is trying to load.

Thanks for the reply. I would have replied to this sooner, if I'd known you had replied (I didn't get a notification email as I usually do :/).

Plugging in my memory stick caused the machine to reboot the first time. The second time, I had

/etc/hotplug/usb.rc: line 122: (I think it was a segmentation fault) modprobe -q usb-ohci > /dev/null >2>&1.

Also, /tmp/errorlog contains the following after the seg faults:

/sbin/modprobe -s -q usbcore.

Thanks!

So the error you're seeing is definitely related to USB.

But I'm not sure what to try next.
Maybe you can search a little on the hardware LQ forum?

I'll do that. Thanks for the help so far though .

You're welcome.

Unfortunately, I still haven't managed to find any help with this. I am thus reviving this thread with more info. Some dmesg stuff that I think is relevant:

pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.5
general protection fault: 0000
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c0108ac0>] Tainted: P
EFLAGS: 000100c2
eax: 00000080 ebx: 00000000 ecx: 080eda80 edx: 00000080
esi: 00000080 edi: 080eda80 ebp: bfffef48 esp: f4e29ff8
ds: 002b es: 0000 ss: 0018
Process usb.agent (pid: 361, stackpage=f4e29000)
Stack: 00000096 0000002b
Call Trace:

Code: fb f7 44 24 30 00 00 02 00 89 e0 75 13 31 d2 e8 4c fc ff ff
<6>pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5

I don't know why there's stuff about PCI Express in there, as my motherboard is a bit too old for PCI-E! Also, does anyone know how to properly disable the ndiswrapper module from loading on boot? It seems to be using usbcore, so maybe that's a problem :/.

To be honest, I think it's some kind of hardware problem, but I'd like to be sure before buying new stuff.

I'm no hardware/usb expert, but maybe PCI-E is in there simply because the kernel supports it. Old PCI
stuff may be compatible (ie usable) via PCI-E (ie in a special mode), hence your system can try to access the
USB device via it's built-in PCI-E interface, regardless if your mobo/hardware supports it.

The "general protection fault" occurs when a piece of software attempts to access a piece of memory that is invalid or in use by other software. This error will kill off the driver software, and can send a "SIGSEGV" (a
segmentation fault signal).

So, you're definitely on to something with this dmesg output.

The "Tainted" bit worries me a bit too. Maybe you're loading a tainted (ie non-standard) kernel module?

That dmesg stuff with the general protection fault hasn't been happening again. The only non-standard module I'm loading is nvidia, but then I've been using that for ages without problems.

My system just crashed again :/. Still get the hotplug seg faults and syslog seems to indicate that the system's trying to load the PCI Express module, as well as not being able to load shpchp:

nick@nick:~$ tail syslog
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/shpchp.o.gz: init_module: No such device
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/shpchp.o.gz: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters. You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/shpchp.o.gz: insmod shpchp failed
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/pciehp.o.gz: init_module: No such device
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/pciehp.o.gz: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters. You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/pciehp.o.gz: insmod pciehp failed
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick kernel: shpchp: shpc_init : shpc_cap_offset == 0
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/shpchp.o.gz: init_module: No such device
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/shpchp.o.gz: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters. You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
Apr 10 18:08:46 nick insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/hotplug/shpchp.o.gz: insmod shpchp failed

Google hasn't given me any useful stuff to do with these. I may try to compile a new kernel, but I think it's a hardware problem so that wouldn't help .

Under the slackware forum, there is a recent post on similar startup errors.
The fix was to upgrade to a 2.6 kernel. I don't know if that's an option for you.

A quick google search on this showed that the pciehp shpchp module errors are
common and harmless (at least under Ubuntu).
There seems to a possibility to blacklist the modules to keep them from loading
by adding them to /etc/modules/blacklist.d or something like that.

Is the USB stick properly formatted? And if it's formatted as FAT, is the vfat module loaded?

Maybe you can also play a little with the modprobe command to see which modules are failing (besides pciehp and shpchp).

Yeah, I may try to upgrade the kernel, but again, I still think it's a hardware problem .

The crashes are occuring without using my USB stick, so I guess I can safely say it's not related to that.

I'll look at modprobe.

The way I see it, you have 3 issues:
* USB: segmentation fault on loading of usb core module(s).
* Alsa (sound): problem with codec
* shpchp and pciehp module errors.
The last one may be harmless, whereas especially the first (your original problem) certainly isn't.

The relationship between all problems may not be so obvious.

Have you tried an "lspci" to see which PCI devices are recognized by your system?