From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jan 29 12:27:11 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA13007 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:27:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from cyclone.degnet.baynet.de ([194.95.214.129]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA12998 for ; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:27:04 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from malte@webmore.com) Received: from niente (unverified [194.95.214.188]) by cyclone.degnet.baynet.de (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.83) with SMTP id ; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 21:23:14 +0100 Message-Id: <3.0.32.19980129211639.02f636f8@cyclone.degnet.baynet.de> X-Sender: moos@cyclone.degnet.baynet.de X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 21:16:40 -0100 To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: Malte Lance Subject: Re: system unstable, how to make it stable again ? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG X-To-Unsubscribe: mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org "unsubscribe questions" At 11:23 29.01.98 -0800, you wrote: >On Thu, 29 Jan 1998, Malte Lance wrote: > >> Assume your system got unstable due to some crashes, in such a way, >> that sometimes it freezes hard (no response from the machine, no ping ...). >> Assume further that some components (libs or apps or ...) are clobbered >> and in the best case your apps just core-dump but in the worst case >> some apps just malfunction and freeze the machine. >> Assume further a kernel rebuild does not help. >> >> Would a "make world" of the source-tree heal the system and make it >> stable again ? >> >> Malte Lance >> malte@webmore.com > >A make world would not necessarily cure all of your troubles. > >The big question I ask my self when things go awry is, "What did I >change?" and, "What are my error messages?" That is the starting point. changed /usr/X11/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers to include -bpp 16 rebooted hacked a mpeg1-player looked at a broken mpeg-file the hacked mpeg-player freezed changed back to 8 bpp rebooted since then i have occasionally freezes every several hours of the MACHINE !!! It just sits there and does nothing. Really. No activity. Absolute dead. Not even a network response from the NIC. When it freezes i have to switch the machine off and on again. At reboot the fsck cures the file-systems and everything is fine again. Then after some hours it freezes again. I recompiled the kernel without cahnging anything in the config-file, but it did not help. >I venture a guess that you removed a mandatory keyword from your kernel >config file. Nope. >Error messages are necessary to get better responses. Hehe ... as i said, it freezes totally. No coredump, no message, no error, no log. Just sudden-death. >What makes >you think your libs or apps got "clobbered?" Just a feeling. It looks more like the symptoms of bad memory, but i did not change any memory-modules and why should my memory go bad suddenly ? Ok it could happen ... but it is not very likely. Malte Lance malte@webmore.com >Good Luck, Hm ... thanks. >Jason Wells > >