panic not rebooting even though /proc/sys/kernel/panic=1?

[Stephane Charette]

Anyone know why a kernel panic would not cause a reboot even though /proc/sys/kernel/panic is set to "1"?

This morning I had the following message on the console of a 2.2.14 box that had been sitting idle overnight:

   [root@localhost /test]# Kernel panic: Free list corrupted

When I pressed ENTER, I found that bash was still responding, though when I tried to run "top" everything froze until I pulled the plug on the box:

   [root@localhost /test]# ls -la
   total 3
   drwxr-x---    2 root     root         1024 Nov  7 23:56 .
   drwxr-xr-x   13 root     root         1024 Nov  7 19:56 ..
   -rw-------    1 root     root            5 Nov  7 23:56 test.txt
   [root@localhost /test]# 
   [root@localhost /test]# top
   Kernel panic: Free list corrupted

1) Anyone know why the kernel panic didn't cause a reboot?

2) Or maybe why something like this would even happen?

Thanks,

Stéphane Charette