# Weird warning at boot by sysctl

## Darkboy76

Hello All!

It's my first post here,(so please be patient!) because I previously always found a solution about what I was looking for just by reading the forum,but this time I'm at loss  :Sad: 

So, I've been using only gentoo for the past two years, but today,after compiling the new 2.6.36 kernel this strange message pops up "systcl unknown HZ value assuming 1024"

then the system boots up without issues: sometimes the same message appears in console with "top" or "w", but not always.

I googled a bit and found some very old posts in other forums saying basically that this is harmless,but I have not really found an explanation about why it happens... a few posts say this may be caused by a rootkit so I ran both rkhunter and chkrootkit and found nothing (I'm not running a server) BUT the "unknown HZ value" appears in a couple of the last lines of chkrootkit (Checking "lkm" unknown hz value!")

I recompiled 2.6.35-r11 which used to work just fine and I still have this message at boot

The only thing I did yesterday was unmasking and emerging the qt-4.7 libraries,but I doubt this could be related; I also tried reemerging procps to no avail....

This is my system

Portage 2.2.0_alpha1 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop/kde, gcc-4.4.5, glibc-2.12.1-r2, 2.6.36-gentoo x86_64)

=================================================================

System uname: Linux-2.6.36-gentoo-x86_64-Intel-R-_Pentium-R-_4_CPU_3.00GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1

Timestamp of tree: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:45:03 +0000

ccache version 2.4 [enabled]

app-shells/bash:     4.1_p9

dev-lang/python:     2.6.5-r3

dev-util/ccache:     2.4-r8

dev-util/cmake:      2.8.1-r2

sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1

sys-apps/openrc:     0.6.3

sys-apps/sandbox:    2.3-r1

sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.68

sys-devel/automake:  1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1

sys-devel/binutils:  2.20.1-r1

sys-devel/gcc:       4.4.5

sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1

sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.10

sys-devel/make:      3.82

virtual/os-headers:  2.6.35 (sys-kernel/linux-headers)

Repositories: gentoo

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64 ~amd64"

ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"

CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config"

CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo"

CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"

FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs ccache distlocks fixlafiles fixpackages news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://de-mirror.org/distro/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.spline.inf.fu-berlin.de/mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.qubenet.net/mirror/gentoo/"

LANG="it_IT.UTF-8"

LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--sort-common -Wl,--as-needed"

LINGUAS="it"

MAKEOPTS="-j3"

PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"

PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"

PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"

PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""

SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

Has anyone ever heard about this? Because I'm getting a little paranoid! any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!!   Thank You  :Smile: 

P.S. This is my Kernel .Config  http://pastebin.com/1if0FeTX

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## audiodef

I see it, too. I don't know what it is, either, but I'll be watching this thread out of curiosity.

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## Darkboy76

Ok, I don't think it's kernel related, I've just tried zen-sources 2.6.35 changing a few settings but the "unknown HZ value" message remains; I googled again and I found some very recent posts on other linux forums complaining about the same thing (i'm glad I'm not alone!) the culprit seams to be procps, but I'm still not sure about it....

procps 3.2.8 does not compile anymore for me, while procps 3.2.8-r1 works but while compiling prints an awful lot of warnings about this:  *Quote:*   

> ps/common.h:20:2: warning: #warning PAGE_SIZE not defined, using sysconf() to determine correct value

 

Anyways, everything works fine,so let's hope it's just a glitch

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## theotherjoe

Have seen the same odd message during boot. And I also think it

has to do with procps-3.2.8-r1 since there are other error messages

from sysctl -a which have nothing to do with my sysctl.conf

```
# sysctl -a

...

fs.epoll.max_user_watches = 817336

fs.suid_dumpable = 0

error: "Invalid argument" reading key "fs.binfmt_misc.register"

fs.binfmt_misc.status = enabled

...

net.ipv4.route.min_pmtu = 552

net.ipv4.route.min_adv_mss = 256

error: permission denied on key 'net.ipv4.route.flush'

net.ipv4.neigh.default.mcast_solicit = 3

```

edit: OK, should have checked before posting:

/proc/sys/fs.binfmt_misc.register and /proc/sys/net.ipv4.route.flush both only have

write permissions. may still have to do with the new 2.6.36 kernel, since I cannot 

remember to have seen any error messages with sysctl before.

edit2: rebooted into kernel-2.6.31 and see the same 

'Unknown HZ value! (85) Assume 1024' and mentioned error messages.

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## Uli Sing

Got these messages on a machine using ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~amd64". Revoking this and reemerging the system banished them. I was never looking for the responsible package. I have some other hobbies too.

But don't be that sure: absolving a gentoo kernel to hastily is definitely  the wrong approach since every new one provides new essential and obvious bugs.

Don't believe me? Try setting up a working(!) NFS server (whatever 3 or 4 version) under 2.6.34-r11 or 2.6.34-r12. 

Thank you for killing two days of my precious life.  :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

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## Uli Sing

Meanwhile I remember it clearly. It was a backup of a running system installed on a second machine. The only thing I've altered - and even in this case I'm not completely sure - was changing the kernel based support of a NIC. Working well on system A I'd got these annoying messages on system B (for the record: HP Proliant ML150 G3). That's all I can contribute concerning this issue.

Maybe still this:

It's not sufficient having the right software, you need the right hardware as well.

Or:

Gentoo works flawless, if you obey these two simple rules:

1. Don't take it for professional use

and

2. Don't take it for personal use

 :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

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