[asterisk-users] TE412 / HPDL380G5 / * 1.4 / CentOS 4.5 Experience

[James FitzGibbon]

Has anyone successfully run * 1.4 with the following configuration (or
something very similar)?

HP DL380 G5 (3Ghz Xeon)
CentOS 4.5 (kernel 2.6.9-55)
Asterisk 1.4.5 (or 1.4.4)
Zaptel 1.4.3 (or 1.4.2.1)
TE412P
TDM400B (2x FXO and 2x FXS modules)

I've had this rig running * 1.2.18 with Zaptel 1.2.17.1 for several months
without any issues.  Upon trying to upgrade to * 1.4.4 and Zaptel 1.4.2.1 a
few weeks ago, I saw several kernel panics, easily reproduceable with a load
test suite that bridged calls from the PSTN to SIP desk phones.  The one
time I exposed it to real world traffic (a small office, 30 extensions), I
saw five panics in the space of three hours.

Interestingly, when the load test only walked through the IVR and queues, I
couldn't get it to panic, even if I filled the TE412P and had 90
simultaneous calls going through the system.  Only bridged calls seem to
cause problems.

The panics didn't seem to follow any particular pattern.  I saw NMI traps a
few times, then failures in the wct4xxx interrupt handler, a few "swap
tainted" errors, etc.

To rule out an interaction between the TE412P and the HP motherboard, I
moved the installation to an Intel server board (model SE7320) with a 3 Ghz
Pentium D.  The hard drive was a direct clone from the HP.  Running the same
load test against 1.4.4/1.4.2.1 - no panics.  Running the load test against
1.4.5/1.4.3 - no panics.  I'm now nearly 6 hours into having the system
exposed to real-world traffic - no panics.

At this point, I'm pretty much ready to just put this Intel board into a
rackmount server and be done with it, but I am interested to see if anyone
else has seen similar problems, or if anyone has run this configuration
without any problems.  Part of me is saying "I can't be the only person to
run * 1.4 on a current HP server", which in turn leads me to wonder if this
is an incompatibility with the specific board I have, or if I've got a
faulty server (though I have run the full HP diagnostic suite several
times).

Thanks for any feedback you can provide.

-- 
j.
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