Debian: system hangs at different times

2025-04-17

Problem: system hangs at different times, when this happens the its impossible to logon to the system. If trying SSH for example I get to enter username but at the password prompt it just hangs. Same thing happens from the CONSOLE. Syslog showed nothing the first time it happened...the second time though I got an error:

Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: c012d6cf
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: PREEMPT
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: Modules linked in: ipv6 tsdev mousedev joydev parport_pc parport evdev pcspkr sh
pchp pciehp pci_hotplug intel_agp intel_mch_agp agpgart via_rhine capability commoncap psmouse genrtc ext3 jbd
e100 mii ds yenta_socket pcmcia_core sr_mod sd_mod ide_cd cdrom ide_disk ide_generic pdc202xx_new aec62xx alim1
5x3 amd74xx atiixp cmd64x cs5520 cs5530 cy82c693 generic hpt34x ns87415 opti621 pdc202xx_old rz1000 sc1200 serv
erworks siimage sis5513 slc90e66 triflex trm290 via82cxxx floppy piix fbcon vga16fb vgastate usbserial usbhid u
sbkbd ehci_hcd uhci_hcd thermal processor fan usb_storage usbcore ide_core sata_sil ata_piix libata scsi_mod un
ix font vesafb cfbcopyarea cfbimgblt cfbfillrect
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: CPU: 0
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: EIP: 0060:[find_get_pages+53/89] Not tainted
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: EFLAGS: 00010087 (2.6.8-2-386)
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: EIP is at find_get_pages+0x35/0x59
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: eax: eb042444 ebx: 00000010 ecx: cf647e70 edx: 00000000
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: esi: cf647e70 edi: ca714b1c ebp: 00000000 esp: cf647e34
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: Process kswapd0 (pid: 49, threadinfo=cf646000 task=cf1f6640)
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: Stack: cf647e68 00000000 c0135679 ca714bac 00000000 00000010 cf647e70 ca714b14
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: c0135a91 cf647e68 ca714bac 00000000 00000010 00000000 00000000 eb042444
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: 06d2bf99 03be080e 8b000000 1c89b85d dd92e824 003dfffd 7e000004 f883c633
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: Call Trace:
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [pagevec_lookup+26/33] pagevec_lookup+0x1a/0x21
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [invalidate_mapping_pages+173/194] invalidate_mapping_pages+0xad/0xc2
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [shrink_cache+392/724] shrink_cache+0x188/0x2d4
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [invalidate_inode_pages+13/17] invalidate_inode_pages+0xd/0x11
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [prune_icache+235/471] prune_icache+0xeb/0x1d7
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [shrink_icache_memory+24/48] shrink_icache_memory+0x18/0x30
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [shrink_slab+238/332] shrink_slab+0xee/0x14c
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [balance_pgdat+380/559] balance_pgdat+0x17c/0x22f
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [kswapd+193/197] kswapd+0xc1/0xc5
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [autoremove_wake_function+0/58] autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x3a
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [ret_from_fork+6/20] ret_from_fork+0x6/0x14
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [autoremove_wake_function+0/58] autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x3a
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [kswapd+0/197] kswapd+0x0/0xc5
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: [kernel_thread_helper+5/11] kernel_thread_helper+0x5/0xb
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: Code: ff 40 04 42 39 da 72 f5 fb b8 00 e0 ff ff 21 e0 ff 48 14 8b
Oct 14 06:25:07 goliat kernel: <6>note: kswapd0[49] exited with preempt_count 1

Debian 3.1, kernel-image 2.6.8-16.
I've did a memtest and nothing wrong with the RAM...but then again, it could be something else int the hardware I guess. Any ideas what I could do? Could it be the MB...or the HDs (4x300GB SATA)?
Or is it, god forbid, a debian bug? Debian: system hangs at different times

Thanks for any help...