On Tue, Jan 22, Mel Gorman wrote:

http://www.csn.ul.ie/~mel/postings/slab-20080122/partial-revert-slab-changes.patch
.. Can you please check on your machine if it fixes your problem?

It does not fix or change the nature of the crash.

Olaf, please confirm whether you need the patch below as well as the
revert to make your machine boot.

It crashes now in a different way if the patch below is applied:

Linux version 2.6.24-rc8-ppc64 (olaf@lingonberry) (gcc version 4.1.2 20070115 (prerelease) (SUSE Linux)) #43 SMP Tue Jan 22 22:39:05 CET 2008
[boot]0012 Setup Arch
EEH: PCI Enhanced I/O Error Handling Enabled
PPC64 nvram contains 8192 bytes
Zone PFN ranges:
  DMA             0 ->   892928
  Normal     892928 ->   892928
Movable zone start PFN for each node
early_node_map[1] active PFN ranges
    1:        0 ->   892928
Could not find start_pfn for node 0
[boot]0015 Setup Done
Built 2 zonelists in Node order, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 880720
Policy zone: DMA
Kernel command line: debug xmon=on panic=1  
[boot]0020 XICS Init
xics: no ISA interrupt controller
[boot]0021 XICS Done
PID hash table entries: 4096 (order: 12, 32768 bytes)
time_init: decrementer frequency = 275.070000 MHz
time_init: processor frequency   = 2197.800000 MHz
clocksource: timebase mult[e8ab05] shift[22] registered
clockevent: decrementer mult[466a] shift[16] cpu[0]
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
console handover: boot [udbg-1] -> real [hvc0]
Dentry cache hash table entries: 524288 (order: 10, 4194304 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 262144 (order: 9, 2097152 bytes)
freeing bootmem node 1
Memory: 3496632k/3571712k available (6188k kernel code, 75080k reserved, 1324k data, 1220k bss, 304k init)
Unable to handle kernel paging request for data at address 0x00000058
Faulting instruction address: 0xc0000000000fe018
cpu 0x0: Vector: 300 (Data Access) at [c00000000075bac0]
    pc: c0000000000fe018: .setup_cpu_cache+0x184/0x1f4
    lr: c0000000000fdfa8: .setup_cpu_cache+0x114/0x1f4
    sp: c00000000075bd40
   msr: 8000000000009032
   dar: 58
 dsisr: 42000000
  current = 0xc000000000665a50
  paca    = 0xc000000000666380
    pid   = 0, comm = swapper
enter ? for help
[c00000000075bd40] c0000000000fb368 .kmem_cache_create+0x3c0/0x478 (unreliable)
[c00000000075be20] c0000000005e6780 .kmem_cache_init+0x284/0x4f4
[c00000000075bee0] c0000000005bf8ec .start_kernel+0x2f8/0x3fc
[c00000000075bf90] c000000000008590 .start_here_common+0x60/0xd0
0:mon> 

0xc0000000000fe018 is in setup_cpu_cache (/home/olaf/kernel/git/linux-2.6-numa/mm/slab.c:2111).
2106                                    BUG_ON(!cachep->nodelists[node]);
2107                                    kmem_list3_init(cachep->nodelists[node]);
2108                            }
2109                    }
2110            }
2111            cachep->nodelists[numa_node_id()]->next_reap =
2112                            jiffies + REAPTIMEOUT_LIST3 +
2113                            ((unsigned long)cachep) % REAPTIMEOUT_LIST3;
2114
2115            cpu_cache_get(cachep)->avail = 0;