[TriLUG] Python causing Kernel Panics? Update

[Brian Henning]

Here's a bit more info.

The panics occur exactly every five minutes, on the five minutes.  i.e.
3:15:00
3:20:00
3:25:00
etc.

Anyone with some under-the-hood knowledge of Fedora Core 2 want to shed 
some light on what happens on that kind of schedule?  It doesn't seem 
likely to be user-related, with a schedule like that.  There's nothing 
in anyone's crontab on that sort of schedule either.

Thanks ongoing,
~Brian


Brian Henning wrote:
> Hi Guys and Gals,
>   Lately one of our boxen has started spewing non-critical kernel panic 
> messages (I say non-critical because it only affects the culprit process 
> and doesn't result in losing interactivity or any services) every few 
> minutes.  Most of the displayed message is gibberish to me (I know what 
> most of it *means*, but it's not useful information to me), but there's 
> a line that says (forgive me if this isn't QUITE verbatim; I'm doing 
> this from memory as the machine's terminal is in a room far away)
> 
> <01> Unable to handle memory paging request
> 
> and
> 
> Process python ... (PID xyzx .....)
> 
> Python?  That's a name I recognize, but I don't know what periodic task 
> would be invoking python in such a way to cause these memory problems.
> 
> I realize that the RIGHT solution is (probably) fix the RAM.  Ultimately 
> I do intend to rebuild this machine with newer hardware.  But for now, 
> is there a way I can figure out what process keeps spawning python, and 
> stop it?  Presuming, of course, that it is not a critical process.
> 
> Apparently it's not that critical anyhow, or Very Bad Things would be 
> happening instead of just a message on the terminal.
> 
> This would just be long enough for me to soften the boss up for spending 
> a couple hundred bucks on new CPU, mobo, and RAM..
> 
> Thanks for the input, as always.
> 
> Regards,
> ~Brian