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Date: Mon, 5 Jun 95 23:02 CDT
To: jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org, bugs@FreeBSD.org
From: uhclem%nemesis@fw.ast.com (Frank Durda IV)
Sent: Mon Jun  5 1995, 23:02:33 CDT
Subject: Re: 2.0.5-A: Very disheartening?
Sender: bugs-owner@FreeBSD.org
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I have been reading your comments about strange behavior in 2.0.5-Alpha
and thought I would mention that I have access to a several different types
of machines that also malfunction under 2.0.5-Alpha, but worked on the
0420SNAP and all earlier FreeBSD versions.  

On these systems, if you made it thru the installation it was a miracle,
The system would only run at all with certain amounts of memory present
(8 Meg).  If you added (12 or 16) or subtracted memory (4), all of
these different systems would panic or just hang 100% of the time.  Weird.

I recently discovered that if I can remove or disable the external L2 cache
(these systems are all 483DX33-based with 64K or 128K of L2 cache in the
form of Intel 485 Turbocache cache subsystems), 2.0.5-Alpha then works fine.


Once 2.0.5-Alpha is installed and running on a non-compressed kernel, I can
put the cache back in (or enable it) and everything still works, even with
memory amounts that would panic or hang with the cache present.

Even though the FreeBSD core group is aware of the problem, without
a failing system in front of them, or the luxury of time to spend helping
me debug it by remote control, I don't expect a fix anytime soon.

As far as I can see, the only failing part is the mechanisms associated
with a compressed kernel, or the compressed kernel itself and certain
types of cache subsystems.   I can boot from a floppy with a uncompressed
kernel and that works fine too.  Only the compressed kernel has trouble.

This cache issue might be related to the problem you are seeing, and if
you have the ability to disable the external cache on your system, try
doing that and see if things work any better.

					Frank Durda IV
					uhclem%nemesis@fw.ast.com