I've discovered that the kernel only crashes when the Folding@Home core
attempts to resume a work unit already in progress. After configuring
kdump-tools to not collect unused memory pages (something apparently
recommended if your system has a larger amount of memory), I attempted
to trigger a crash by starting the Folding@Home client service. However,
after starting the service and waiting about 15 seconds or so (about how
long it takes from starting the service to the kernel crashing), there
was no crash. I waited a while longer, then checked on the work unit
progress with FAHControl and noticed that Folding@Home had just
downloaded and started a new work unit (that, thankfully, uses the same
core as the previous one) as the previous unit had already been
finished. I let it run all night without any issues, however when I
powered off my laptop, booted it up again later and attempted to run
Folding@Home again, the kernel crashed upon Folding@Home trying to
resume the work unit.
I do seem to have a problem getting crash dump collection to work,
though. The dmesg file collected with this latest crash dump (which is
apparently where the kernel log gets dumped, separate from the dump
file) only contains the line "[ 0.000000] " precisely 15447298 times
(according to nano's line count upon opening the file). Clearly
something is broken, but I do not know what exactly it is. (Previous
attempts at crash dump collection did not even give me a plain text
dmesg file, for some reason they were being saved as binary files, and I
was unable to read them.)
I may continue trying to get a proper crash dump with a proper kernel
log dump with actual information in it so you have something to look at,
though at this rate I'm about ready to give up. If you'd like what I
have managed to get so far, useless dmesg file and all, I've packaged it
up as a 277.4 MB .tar.gz I could send or upload to a file hosting site
for you to download.
If I do actually manage to get a kernel log with something useful in it
(or, at least, something other than the same line repeated millions of
times over) I will send that to you as soon as I can.
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