Subject: request_module: runaway loop modprobe net-pf-1

From: Ashlesha Shintre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:42:39 -0800

Hi,

During boot up on the Encore M3 board (AU1500 MIPS) of the 2.6.14.6
kernel, the process stops after the NFS filesystem has been mounted,
memory freed  and spits out the following message:

> request_module: runaway loop modprobe net-pf-1

I can ping to the board and see that the control periodically goes back
to the flush_local_tlb_all function in the arch/mips/mm/tlb-r4k.c file
and prints a line that I have put in..

What does the net-pf-1 mean?

Thanks
Ashlesha.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 13:38:42 -0600

> > request_module: runaway loop modprobe net-pf-1
If I had to guess, you have a big endian kernel and you used a little
endian filesystem or the converse.

-Steve

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From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:17:12 +0000

> > request_module: runaway loop modprobe net-pf-1

The kernel tried to open UNIX domain socket but because support is not
compiled it will load the module instead.  Now, glibc-based programs
happen to try to connect to nscd via a UNIX domain socket on startup
and the whole show starts all over.  After a few iterations the kernel
gets tired of the whole game and prints this friendly message.

> What does the net-pf-1 mean?

net-pf-1 is PF_UNIX, see the definitions in include/linux/socket.h.  So
you should set CONFIG_UNIX to y.  Building it as a module won't work
as you just found :).

  Ralf

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From: Ashlesha Shintre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:44:35 -0800

On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 22:17 +0000, Ralf Baechle wrote:
> you should set CONFIG_UNIX to y.  

Thanks for your reply Ralf, but I dont see he CONFIG_UNIX option in my
Makefile, so I created one, but still get the same error!
is there anything else that i should try?

Thanks again,
Ashlesha.
> Building it as a module won't work
> as you just found :).
> 
>   Ralf

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From: mlachwani <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:10:02 -0800

CONFIG_UNIX is defined in net/unix/Kconfig or simply do a "make 
menuconfig" and search for UNIX.

It depends on CONFIG_NET. Check your .config ...

thanks,
Manish Lachwani

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From: Ashlesha Shintre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:55:53 -0800

Hi,

So the ">>>> request_module: runaway loop modprobe net-pf-1" problem is
now solved, I dont get the same error again --
Thank you Ralf, Manish and Steve for your prompt responses..

However, the kernel gets stuck now after mounting the filesystem and
freeing memory.  It does not execute the shell.  When I give a boot
argument such as init=/bin/sh, it attempts to kill init.

I m sure that the endianness is not an issue - everything is big endian.

I statically compiled a hello world program and instead of the rcS
script in the init.d directory, put in this entry in the inittab

sys::sysinit:/etc/init.d/hello

however, I dont see "Hello World" on the console! -- meaning the problem
is in userspace?

Any ideas on how to debug this situation?

Thanks,
Ashlesha.

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 07:45:25 +0100

Hi,

> I m sure that the endianness is not an issue - everything is big 

We had some problem in the past, where the reverse endianess bit was
set, that would result in a crash when the system starts init. Not sure
what bootloader you are using, but maybe it is worth checking the RE bit
in CP0.STATUS, since otherwise your userspace applications will run in
little endian.

Regards
Andre

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From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 14:09:14 +0000

> in CP0.STATUS, since otherwise your userspace applications will run in

This was fixed in February for 2.6.16 already.  Also Ashleha is using
a different CPU ...

  Ralf