Unlocked AMDs and error messages

[jackdaws]

This may seem a strange thing to post here. It concerns a problem that I'm NOT having with Linux-Mint. I've been using Mint's grandparent distro, Debian, for over six years, and apart from the rather hands on experience that Debian gives you at times, I've been quite happy with it throughout. However, I've been using a 3-core Athlon II cpu for the last several months, and whenever I unlock it to 4 cores, and log onto Debian (Wheezy, using KDE) I get every few minutes the following error message:

Code: Select all

Message from syslogd@system at Oct 8 23:07:09 ...
kernel:[ 299.816048] [Hardware Error]: CPU:0 MC4_STATUS[Over|CE|MiscV|-|AddrV|CECC]: 0xdc3148f1001c011b

Message from syslogd@system at Oct 8 23:07:09 ...
kernel:[ 299.816064] [Hardware Error]: MC4_ADDR: 0x0000000236c998e8

Message from syslogd@system at Oct 8 23:07:09 ...
kernel:[ 299.816071] [Hardware Error]: Northbridge Error (node 0): L3 ECC data cache error.

Message from syslogd@system at Oct 8 23:07:09 ...
kernel:[ 299.816080] [Hardware Error]: cache level: L3/GEN, tx: GEN, mem-tx: RD

Now, here's where the bit about Linux Mint comes in. I don't get the problem using Mint 13 (KDE). I tried to get some suggestions about this from the Debian forums, but no-one seems to have anything to say on the matter. If anyone has any suggestion that would point me in the right direction towards a solution, I'd be very grateful. If I don't get one, I'll probably just migrate to Mint. Of course, I know that there's therefore a temptation to say that the discrepancy is because Mint is superior in every respect, but that really wouldn't help. I'm looking for something more specific than that. Any ideas, folks?

[Lanser]

Hi Jackdaws. Have you compared the two kernel versions ?

Lanser

[jackdaws]

Hi Lanser,
The kernel in Debian is 3.2.0-3 & in Mint its 3.2.0.23. Both are the 64 bit versions.

[Lanser]

Jackdaws, given the variations in Motherboards and Bios's, trying to track down the bug could be a PITA.
But without drilling into the error logs, my gut tells me that the K8 power management could different between KDE Debian and KDE LM13.

If you have the time to experiment, it might be interesting to see if Mint Debian is stable for you.

Lanser