I’ve just begun to pull together some interesting data on a series of Linux VM crashes I’ve seen. I don’t have a resolution yet, but some interesting patterns have emerged.

Crash Symptoms

A CentOS 4.x or 5.x guest will crash with a message similar to the following on its console:

CentOS 4.x:

[<f883b299>] .text.lock.scsi_error+0x19/0x34 [scsi_mod]
[<f88c19ce>] mptscsih_io_done+0x5ee/0x608 [mptscsi] (…)
[<c02de564>] common_interrupt+0x18/0x20
[<c02ddb54>] system_call+0x0/0x30

CentOS 5.x:

RIP  [<ffffffff8014c562>] list_del+0x48/0x71 RSP <ffffffff80425d00> <0>Kernel Panic - not syncing: Fatal exception

A hard reset (i.e. pressing the reset button on the VM’s console) is required to reboot the guest.
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