From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 17 05:33:06 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4390316A4CE for ; Wed, 17 Mar 2004 05:33:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from ex-nihilo-llc.com (ex-nihilo-llc.com [206.114.147.90]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFF1843D31 for ; Wed, 17 Mar 2004 05:33:05 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from aaron@alpete.com) Received: from mail.alpete.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ex-nihilo-llc.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 39DC41CB for ; Wed, 17 Mar 2004 08:36:00 -0500 (EST) Received: from 162.114.211.143 (proxying for 172.26.45.133) (SquirrelMail authenticated user aaron@alpete.com) by mail.alpete.com with HTTP; Wed, 17 Mar 2004 08:36:00 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19326.162.114.211.143.1079530560.squirrel@mail.alpete.com> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 08:36:00 -0500 (EST) From: "Aaron Peterson" To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 Importance: Normal Subject: regular (but not predictable) complete freeze-ups X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: aaron@alpete.com List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 13:33:06 -0000 I'm experiencing regular freeze-ups of my 5.2.1 system. It is a p4 2.8 running hyperthreaded, 800 FSB, Serial ATA, 8x AGP. So this is relatively new hardware which is sometimes buggy all by itself. I'm running X with XFCE4, and periodically I experience complete system freeze-ups. No mouse movement, no caps-lock light on the keyboard, no ssh from a remote machine, nothing. I don't think I can reproduce this problem on demand, as it doesn't seem to be related to a specific application. It seems to be more closely related to system load, although this machine has compiled for days at a time with no problem. I am also having problems with gnucash, and was trying to run gdb on it last night, and did consistently freeze my system by allowing gdb to get well into its work and then trying to open another program. the two that froze the system were aterm and firefox and they were the only two I tried. This has happened when I didn't open any new programs too. I suspect that pan has caused freeze up on a few occasions, and mencoder too. Those freezes did not coincide with my starting any new programs, but rather happened after they were running a while. If i'm only running aterm, firefox, and irssi it will seemingly run forever without crashing. All this description and no question yet? heh. well my question is how can I set up an environment that will tell me what is causing these freeze ups? do i need a null modem cable on the serial port to a remote terminal? (i've heard freebsd makes a last ditch effort to spit errors to the serial port when it crashes) what might i try? I see nothing in the logs. because this appears to be an instantaneous halt to all operations, that doesn't surprise me though. perhaps i should see what my milage is with another os, and if it remains bad begin to investigate my hardware? is there a good hardware burn-in and/or analysis program for freebsd that i might try?