runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000

["Tom Lanyon" <tomlanyon@gmail.com>]

Greetings,

I'm encountering a rather annoying error on one of our AMD Opteron
boxes. I recompiled the working 2.6.17 kernel to add some extra SCSI
support and booted to find something similar to:

usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:KBD,PNP0f0e:PS2M] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
device-mapper: ioctl: 4.10.0-ioctl (2006-09-14) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
device-mapper: multipath: version 1.0.5 loaded
device-mapper: multipath round-robin: version 1.0.0 loaded
device-mapper: multipath emc: version 0.0.3 loaded
TCP cubic registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Freeing unused kernel memory: 324k freed
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000

... and then a hung kernel.

I figured I'd enabled/disabled something I shouldn't have and went
through the kernel config many times, recompiling with different
options (including ELF and misc emulation support), but to no avail.

As time ticked closer to 5pm on a Friday my interest decreased and so
I tried upgrading to 2.6.18 and then 2.6.19, with a tonne of different
configurations. Still nothing. The best I could achieve was on a fresh
2.6.19.1 I managed to pass the modprobe and load some input drivers,
but then it hung directly after that.

...
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /class/input/input0
input: PS/2 Generic Mouse as /class/input/input1


Any advice on debugging this would be appreciated. How can I discover
what is trying to load binfmt-0000 and why is it looping?

Regards

--
Tom Lanyon
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