[Savannah-users] problem with gnu find, kernel oops, i386

[Paul E Condon]

I'm new to this. Just registered within the hour. 
I have been getting kernel oops while running find for several
days (weeks?) on an old Dell desktop running Debian Squeeze.
I include a copy of what I see on the screen when it happens.
I am now convinced that these are not rare unreprocible events,
something that I can reliable make happen in less than an hour
of running a script (bash) which could need running once a day,
but with a backlog of unprocessed input, I have about several
days of continuous running to do. *But* I need some close guidance
in gathering data and presenting it in a useful way. I am not
a world class programmer, and I don't see how it can be possible
for a user like me to generate kernel oops. System utilities are
supposed to be, as a goal, immune to user stupidity. What follows
is what I see on an open gnome-terminal window in a ssh connection
to the affected computer. 

##### an actual oops:
Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899131] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP 

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899136] last sysfs file: 
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899260] Process find (pid: 28434, ti=f2ede000 task=f64f61c0 
task.ti=f2ede000)

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899263] Stack:

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899296] Call Trace:

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899358] Code: 43 24 75 1e 8b 43 28 8b 4c 24 04 8b 54 24 0c e8 43 
88 07 00 85 c0 75 0a 3e ff 03 fe 43 08 89 d8 eb 1f fe 43 08 8b 36 85 f6 74 14 
<8b> 06 0f 18 00 90 8d 5e ec 8b 44 24 08 39 43 20 75 e8 eb 8a 31 

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899405] EIP: [<c10c153c>] __d_lookup+0xb5/0xd3 SS:ESP 
0068:f2edfe30

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:03 ...
 kernel:[ 5496.899412] CR2: 000000000024491c

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017190] Oops: 0000 [#2] SMP 

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017194] last sysfs file: 
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017318] Process find (pid: 28456, ti=f2fe8000 task=efd2e1c0 
task.ti=f2fe8000)

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017322] Stack:

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017353] Call Trace:

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017415] Code: 43 24 75 1e 8b 43 28 8b 4c 24 04 8b 54 24 0c e8 43 
88 07 00 85 c0 75 0a 3e ff 03 fe 43 08 89 d8 eb 1f fe 43 08 8b 36 85 f6 74 14 
<8b> 06 0f 18 00 90 8d 5e ec 8b 44 24 08 39 43 20 75 e8 eb 8a 31 

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017465] EIP: [<c10c153c>] __d_lookup+0xb5/0xd3 SS:ESP 
0068:f2fe9e30

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:09 ...
 kernel:[ 5502.017472] CR2: 000000000024491c

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839375] Oops: 0000 [#3] SMP 

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839381] last sysfs file: 
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda/uevent

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839505] Process find (pid: 28470, ti=f2ede000 task=efd29980 
task.ti=f2ede000)

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839508] Stack:

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839541] Call Trace:

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839604] Code: 43 24 75 1e 8b 43 28 8b 4c 24 04 8b 54 24 0c e8 43 
88 07 00 85 c0 75 0a 3e ff 03 fe 43 08 89 d8 eb 1f fe 43 08 8b 36 85 f6 74 14 
<8b> 06 0f 18 00 90 8d 5e ec 8b 44 24 08 39 43 20 75 e8 eb 8a 31 

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839650] EIP: [<c10c153c>] __d_lookup+0xb5/0xd3 SS:ESP 
0068:f2edfe30

Message from address@hidden at Jul 17 11:02:19 ...
 kernel:[ 5512.839657] CR2: 000000000024491c
### end of oops messages

for information about the hardware i run x86info and get:

address@hidden:/media/gfx1/arxiv/arxiv# x86info
x86info v1.25.  Dave Jones 2001-2009
Feedback to <address@hidden>.

Found 1 CPU
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
EFamily: 0 EModel: 0 Family: 15 Model: 4 Stepping: 9
CPU Model: Pentium 4 D (Foster)
Processor name string: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.53GHz
Type: 0 (Original OEM)  Brand: 0 (Unsupported)
Number of cores per physical package=1
Number of logical processors per socket=1
Number of logical processors per core=1
APIC ID: 0x0    Package: 0  Core: 0   SMT ID 0
address@hidden:/media/gfx1/arxiv/arxiv# 
### end of x86info

Much more info is available, but I have not yet learned how to
submit information to your bug tracking system, and need help
with that. One fact, possibly important is the the data is on
external usb hard drives, and the files system is ext4, which
is new to me. System is Debian Squeeze. Except for ext4 it is
an totally standard Debian netinstall installation. But, again,
what I think is unexceptional may not be. Ask questions and
I'll give answers, or ask how to obtain the answer, and then
spend some time trying.

Thanks for reading.
Please respond.
-- 
Paul E Condon           
address@hidden