Hello, I experienced system hang on my SMP machine and it turned out to be due to console write before mmu initialization completes. To be more specific, even if secondary processors are not in status enough to do actual console I/O (e.g. mmu is not initialized), call_console_drivers() tries to do it. This leads to unpredictable result. For me, for example, it cause machine check abort and hang up system. Attached is a patch for it. --- linux/kernel/printk.c 2001/11/27 04:41:49 1.1.1.8 +++ linux/kernel/printk.c 2001/12/03 05:25:26 @@ -491,20 +491,22 @@ */ void release_console_sem(void) { unsigned long flags; unsigned long _con_start, _log_end; unsigned long must_wake_klogd = 0; for ( ; ; ) { spin_lock_irqsave(&logbuf_lock, flags); must_wake_klogd |= log_start - log_end; + if (!(cpu_online_map & 1UL << smp_processor_id())) + break; if (con_start == log_end) break; /* Nothing to print */ _con_start = con_start; _log_end = log_end; con_start = log_end; /* Flush */ spin_unlock_irqrestore(&logbuf_lock, flags); call_console_drivers(_con_start, _log_end); } console_may_schedule = 0; up(&console_sem); Best regards. -- NOMURA, Jun'ichi HPC Operating System Group, 1st Computers Software Division, Computers Software Operations Unit, NEC Solutions. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/