Upon starting my machine and logging in…I seem to get a KP afer a few minutes of use. This problem started yesterday evening. I’m not doing anything special to cause the problem, however, I think it may be linked to either NetworkManager or the iwlagn driver. Any and all help would be appreciated and please let me know if you need more information.
Distro:
OpenSuSE 11.1 x86_64
Computer:
HP Pavilion DV9500t CTO
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2 GHz
2 GB RAM
Intel 4965 WLAN chip
Hi,
Highly recommended: Backup all your files immediatly if you don’t have an actual one! I had three times that problem and it was three times a problem with my hard disk.
What does /var/log/messages say?
hth
bye
Erik
As the previous poster said: back up! I’ve had this happen with a bad sector on the hard drive.
Use a “live” CD to do the backup to a flash drive, if you can. That’s what I’d recommend.
Curiosity: does it complete booting? Do you get to a desktop before the panic? Or does it seem to crash at the same point each time? If the latter, that’s another strong indicator that it’s the hard drive (in fact, be prepared to get an error when you start the backup; you may lose some files).
Otherwise, the “live” CD makes another nice test: if you get the panics at seeming random, you may have a hardware problem. Check for a loose cable or a RAM stick that needs to be popped back into place more firmly.
I’ve rmmod’d iwlagn as well as the vmware modules (vmmon and vmci) and the machine’s been running for 6+ hrs.
EDIT:
Now running on iwlagn, will report back on status in 8 hours.
It completes booting every time and a LiveCD test run with Kubuntu presents no issues while attempting to do the same internet activities (browsing youtube & chat, etc…) However, when it may panic is entirely up to how much internet activity I give my computer. Running on iwlagn for the past 3 hours or so seems to have panicked my kernel once again.
Huh. I wonder if the network driver is the issue?
The thing is…it just started happening randomly. So that’s why I’m wondering what the issue is.
I assume that you’ve already run an fsck? I’m back to the theory that some part of that hard drive is corrupted. You may have developed some bad sectors since the install.
The clue is that it doesn’t seem to do it on the live CD (if I’m reading you correctly). Maybe the live CD isn’t touching the bad part of the drive.
Here’s a great description for checking a drive thoroughly: Jon Grant’s Technorama: Check (fsck) your GNU-Linux filesystems! (ext2/ext3 & FAT). Other articles online will suggest that you try to download a check utility from your hard drive manufacturer’s Website.
And by the way … speaking from hard experience … if you find more than a few bad sectors, it’s time to replace that hard drive. It’s dying and just hasn’t had the good grace to lay down yet. 
Well, I had left my machine on the kernel messages console after I modprobe’d iwlagn again. There was a stack trace just as I had expected. Further research during the day revealed that a fix had been implemented since before the 11.1 release of OpenSuSE. The fix included a new version of the iwl uCode, which I am running right now without any issues for the past 4+ hrs. I discarded the HDD theory since SMART revealed no problems and I’ve always been told by SMART of a failing drive ahead of time :). The bugzilla page for this bug can be found http://www.intellinuxwireless.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1703.
Hah!! Glad you solved it! So it WASN’T the hard drive.
Stuff like that can be a booger to run down … … …
Yeah, I ruled out the hdd almost instantly because it didn’t panic at the same place every time. Thanks to everyone for their help, though