Slashdot Mirror
Gnarly Error Messages
Veeru writes "In my career, I have run across some whopper error messages, but a call from the mainframe sysop one night beat them all: 'We are experiencing MVS processor spin loops, the programs are running while holding a disabled CPU. This is causing XCF communication delays to the point where we are losing VTAM RTP routing, are suffering OSPF adjacency failures on TCP/IP dynamic routing and MIM VCF failures. Whatever this code is, it should NOT be propagated to production or we run the risk of losing the development plex if XCF signaling is adversely impacted by processor disabled spin loops'. My friend once got an error message 'Error 2 while trying to report error 2'. I would be curious to hear from the Slashdot community on encounters with other bizarre error messages."
I hate to ruin a perfectly good story, but what you saw was probably "DOUBLE PANIC."
If an SGI box kernel panics, it does exactly what you described, printing the message "KERNEL PANIC" at the top of the textport and spewing out lots of stack traces after it.
Now, kernel panics are, of course, handled by a handler. (Those panic messages don't happen by magic, you know.) If, on the off chance, your machine should panic, and then panic again inside the panic handler-- apart from meaning something is really, really wrong-- the system prints the message "DOUBLE PANIC" on the screen.
That's probably what you saw. I've seen this many times-- always due to faulty hardware.
Of course, I wouldn't put it past SGI to put a joke in their panic messages. This is, of course, the company that warned users in its workstation owner's guide not to "dangle the mouse by its cable or throw mouse at co-workers."
And there's always the ever-popular audiopanel -spinaltap gag. Running audiopanel with the -spinaltap flag makes the VU meters go to 11. Naturally.
I write in my journal
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Usually, there is an option to fix this in the bios. Normally it's on the first bios setup screen, labelled "Halt on: (list of options)" or somesuch. Tell it to keep keep silent on boot errors, and you can probably yank that keyboard.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Reportedly, that error message is traditional, and used to be accurate. You'd get that if the printer had jammed in such a way that there was paper pressed on one side against a spinning part, generating heat and paper dust. By the time you got to the printer, it would probably have burst into flames. Of course, the printer could have broken in a less catastrophic way, but people don't tend to complain when their computer tells them their huge printer is on fire and it turns out it's merely broken. These days, of course, printers rarely burst into flames, but if there's something mysteriously wrong with the printer that's not one of the standard problems, who knows? (The message tends to come up if the kernel doesn't understand the printer status quite right)
See this linux kernel post.
Dang, I just tried to replicate this error for a funny screenshot, and apparently XP "does not work after year 2099" either, since it rolls back to 1980 instead of 2100. Maybe if I set it in the BIOS...
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Totally OT but here's the deal on that:
- most newer PS/2 keyboards can be hot plugged with no problem
- most older (AT-style) keyboards with a PS/2 adaptor will cause damage
- the damage is actually caused by a filter capacitor in the keyboard drawing too much juice initially for the poor little fuse on the PS/2 port to handle. If you look at any mbd with PS/2 ports (and you know what a surface mount fuse looks like) you'll see one each for the mouse and keyboard
- newer keyboards (anything made in the last 4 or 5 years) are better designed and have smaller filter capacitors, hence less risk (if any) of blowing the fuse
- if you do blow the fuse you can just bridge it with a carefully bent paperclip or a bit of careful soldering; I've never seen any other part of the circuit take any damage after bridging, even with repeated hot-plugs of the keyboard (or mouse) which toasted the fuse originally
But yeah, hot-plugging anything that isn't actually designed for it is kind of asking for trouble.