[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk Crashing (high load issues)

[Adam Goryachev]

On Thu, 2005-11-10 at 14:44 -0700, Kyle Hagan wrote:
> Here is the actual messages file:
> 
> Nov  9 15:19:12 xeonAsterisk kernel: BUG: soft lockup detected on CPU#3!
> Nov  9 15:19:12 xeonAsterisk kernel:
> Nov  9 15:19:12 xeonAsterisk kernel: Modules linked in: md5 ipv6 
> parport_pc lp parport autofs4 i2c_dev i2c_core rfc
> omm l2cap bluetooth sunrpc pcmcia yenta_socket rsrc_nonstatic 
> pcmcia_core dm_mod video button battery ac uhci_hcd e
> hci_hcd wct4xxp(U) zaptel(U) crc_ccitt shpchp tg3 floppy ext3 jbd 
> megaraid_mbox megaraid_mm sd_mod scsi_mod

Why would you have all those modules loaded on an asterisk server?? Do
you *REALLY* even have a PCMCIA slot on your server? Do you need USB? Or
parallel port? Do you use IPv6 with asterisk (not supported AFAIK)??
even bluetooth and stuff is running!

I'd start by removing all the modules that are not needed. In fact, I'd
go into the BIOS and disable all the hardware that wasn't required such
as USB, bluetooth, etc

I'd also not use any crappy fake hardware raid, I've found either proper
hardware raid cards, or else linux software raid (MD driver) works best.

Also, keep in mind that the fact that your old server can cope with the
load (albeit slowly) yet your new server crashes, then the fault is
(imho) clearly somewhere other than digium hardware/asterisk. I would be
looking at areas such as hardware faults, linux kernel faults with your
specific hardware, etc. I'd be doing various stress tests on the various
components to try to make it crash. 

Have you tried it with a straight linux kernel from kernel.org ?? What
versions?
Have you tried it with a non-SMP kernel from kernel.org and/or your
distro?
Have you tried a nice, simple, distro like debian? IMHO, I found redhat,
etc make too many customisations even to simple things like the kernel,
so even when I used to use redhat, I always used my own kernel without
any of their patches etc. One thing I always did was to not compile
anything into the kernel unless it was needed for the system, and
usually I'd disable module loading completely (though you can't do this
with asterisk unfortunately).

Just my 10c worth ...

Regards,
Adam