From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Feb 10 04:13:12 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id EAA01916 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 10 Feb 1996 04:13:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from haldjas.folklore.ee (Haldjas.folklore.ee [193.40.6.121]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id EAA01641 for ; Sat, 10 Feb 1996 04:13:00 -0800 (PST) Received: (from narvi@localhost) by haldjas.folklore.ee (8.6.12/8.6.12) id OAA00550; Sat, 10 Feb 1996 14:12:51 +0200 Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 14:12:51 +0200 (EET) From: Narvi To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Unexplained segfaults in 2.1.0-RELEASE In-Reply-To: <199602100844.TAA25424@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 10 Feb 1996, Michael Smith wrote: > Luis Verissimo stands accused of saying: > > > > I have a 486DX4-100 machine running FreeBSD-2.1R. I experienced the same > > problems. I had to disable both the internal and external caches, of my > > machine. It then worked find. > > > > I have another 486DX2-66 older machine, that keeps getting those signals, > > even with both caches disabled. > > > > Can anybody tell me where is the list of machines that are currently > > running FreeBSD with no problems? > > This is (obviously, if you actually think about it for a second) a totally > impossible question. Let's see, there are perhaps something of the order > of a hundred or so distinct CPU variants that can run FreeBSD. Perhaps > a thousand or so major motherboard chipsets, several tens of significantly > different disk controllers, several hundred different video cards and so on. > > Now take each number, one after another, and multiply them all together. > > This is the total number of possible PC configurations that there are. Let's > assume that we were to build one of each of these hundred million or so > combinations, and do a 'make world' on each to check them. If we assume > that the systems are reasonably fast (not all true 8) this will take > perhaps 10 hours each. So now we have a billion testing hours required, > or 114,000 testing-years. Actually, a lot of this has been already done, and is being done all the time by numerous people. Perhaps a file could/should be created, where one could contribute their experiences? That way everybody asking about their configurations could be pointed first to that file... > > Do you understand yet why what you ask is impossible? > That way it would soon become a bit more possible. > Now, if you said "this is my hardware", and listed everything you have, > including the CPU manufacturer and motherboard chipset, it's possible that > someone will know something, and will tell you. If not, you can add your > two systems to the grouop that FreeBSD does _not_ work on due to > fundamental hardware problems. > > However, it could just be that you have faulty memory, and your motherboard > is actually fine, or your CPU could be faulty... > Or faulty SRAM - you can't find out unless you try again using proven RAM... Sander.