LinuxQuestions.org - segmentation faults during copy of many files

Hi folks,

Since many days I'm trying to find out the reason for the crashes during the backup of my files. For simplicity I only speak of cp, but cpbk as well as rsync gives me problems. I hope somebody can give me a good hint since I haven't found anything helpful in the net.

WHAT I HAVE:
Hardware: Dual Celeron 450, ASUS P2BD, 384MB RAM, Promise U133TX2 (PDC20269), 40GB WD (internal IDE) + 2x80GB Maxtor + 2x120GB Maxtor HDs (Promise)
Software: SuSE 8.2 (2.4.20 SMP 64GB), Software Raid0 (/dev/hdf1 +/dev/hdh1 = /dev/md0), reiserfs (3.5 and 3.6)

PROBLEM:
"cp -av" from and to any hd connected to the promise controller gives me either a system freeze or segmentation faults (see below) (which look different each time) after a certain amount of copied data (vary each attempt from 1-2 to 8-10GB).

I also made tests without the raid, i.e. I removed /dev/md1, repartitioned and reformatted the hds and copied some files -> crash

For test purposes I connected one hd as primary slave at the internal IDE controller and started a copy of 20GB from this hd to the system disk -> no crash.

For this reason I guess it has something to to with the promise controller. However it is officially supported by the 2.4.20 kernel.
But the module seems to be loaded correctly.

MORE FACTS:
- there are no IRQ-conflicts
- tried different PCI-latency settings in the bios (32 - 0)
- also reinstalled OS (was SuSE 7.3 before)
- swapped hd cables, hds, ram
- turned on/off ACPI
- played around with the DMA settings (dma=off is awfully slow, thus I didn't test it)
- checked the hds with Maxtor's "Powermax" diagnosis tool

Unfortunately I'm not allowed to post any links to give you more information on my system :mad:

Does anybody know of any problems regarding promise and SMP?
I remember there is a possibility to temporary disable one CPU at boot-time, isn't there?

I would be grateful for any hints.

Sascha