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Date:      Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:35:13 +0300
From:      Manolis Kiagias <sonic2000gr@gmail.com>
To:        Aggelidis Nikos <aggelidis.news@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: weird restarts when compiling
Message-ID:  <4879A221.3050001@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <30fc78250807122309r21ea625dn58c93ac7d1f3c345@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <30fc78250807122309r21ea625dn58c93ac7d1f3c345@mail.gmail.com>

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Aggelidis Nikos wrote:
> Hi to all the list, i 've been using FreeBSD for almost a month ,and i
> have this weird problem. Sometimes when i try to compile a program the
> computer will hard-reset itself, like someone pulled of the plug...
> For example yesterday i was trying to install jdk1.6 + eclipse, and
> while i was compiling eclipse {more precisely -if i remember
> correctly-  the "diablo-jdk" needed for eclipse} the computer rebooted
> itself.
>
> The load of the computer was: 2-3xterms, 1 Konversation irc client
> ,several opera9.51 windows, 1-2 konqueror windows, and 1-2 Firefox
> widows. I have a dual core box with 2GB of memory and i use freebsd7
> 32bit. The computer was online for 8hours with almost the same load
> {minus the compilation-procedure}.
>
> * Has anyone had problems like this?
> * What can i do to investigate a bit more what was the situation
> before the restart?
> * Is there anyway to solve this problem.
>
>
> thanks for your help,
> nikos
>
> PS: i could blame the power company but the above problem has happened
> before{several times} when i tried to compile "big" programs like
> firefox or do a pkgdb -Fu, so i don't think it is this.
>
>   
Hi Nikos,

This sounds like a hardware problem to me. It is not easy to find out 
the exact cause, except perhaps by swapping components:

- Could be bad RAM, but  I doubt it is you would probably get at least a 
kernel panic and not a hard reboot
- Could be that your power supply can not handle the increased current 
required by the CPU / disk when compiling, voltages fall out of spec, 
and the motherboard resets itself. I've seen this happening quite a few 
times - systems exhibit a variety of weird symptoms like this, commonly 
failing when running CPU intensive apps.
- Your CPU / system may get overheated and hits a thermal cutoff.
- You could have some other faulty component, or some of your BIOS 
settings are too 'high'

Things to try:
- Take the cover off and see whether there is heat build up when 
compiling and also whether the fans work adequately.
- Swap out the power supply
- Change some BIOS settings, or maybe underclock the CPU a bit so it 
requires less power and see if it works then.

Most of the people here are used to run long compilation / portupgrade 
cycles (sometimes in excess of 24 hours) and when a system fails 
unexpectedly like this it is normal to suspect hardware problems.

Manolis

P.S. I removed the -hackers list from the reply - this question is 
better suited for -questions only.



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