[TriLUG] Kernel Panics.......

[Brian Henning]

Hi Guys and Gals,
   I have a production server that has been kernel-panicking with very 
aggrivating regularity over the past week.  I took out what I thought 
was a RAM module with a bad spot in it yesterday, but that did not 
prevent another panic from occurring sometime before 8am this morning. 
Unfortunately I don't have the exact message in front of me (I know, I 
should have written it down...), but it was a whole screenful of almost 
identical messages, which boiled down to something about "spin_lock" and 
"already locked by /some/thing/timer.h" (or maybe timer.c...I forget).

Can someone verify if that's caused by a particular sort of hardware 
failure?  This server was built from aging parts.  I suspect perhaps 
another bad spot in RAM or a hard drive headed for failure, but I don't 
really want to keep taking shots in the dark if there's something else 
at work here that someone can identify.

Maybe a kernel bug?  Oh yes, here are the system stats:
CPU: P-III 850MHz
Kernel: 2.6.10-1.9_FC2
Crucial services:
   MySQL-3.23.58-9.1
   dovecot-0.99.10.5
   apache-2.0.51-2.9
   sendmail-8.12.11-4.6
   openssh-3.6.1p2-34
   samba-3.0.10-1.fc2
and other things here and there that I'm sure I'm forgetting.  I'm going 
to try downgrading the kernel by a build or two while I await expert 
responses..

Thanks a ton!
~Brian