Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:47:34 -0400 From: "Alexander Sack" <pisymbol@gmail.com> To: "Alain G. Fabry" <alainfabry@belgacom.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freeze and crashes Message-ID: <3c0b01820804250747y4c16392dg18452be3553a62c5@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20080425130152.GA28369@ducati-748.3rdrock.kicks-ass.net> References: <20080425130152.GA28369@ducati-748.3rdrock.kicks-ass.net>
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Hi Alain: Without more details its hard to understand where your hang or freeze is coming from. What I DO suggest is that you build a debug kernel and/or minimally enable the kernel debugger (DDB). Then when the box is frozen you can get into the debugger (CTRL-ALT-ESC), type "bt", and post it on the list to give everybody a chance to understand what is hanging ("show msgbuf" as well actually). Here is some good documentation on how to build kernels (and debug ones) if you don't already know: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig-building.html Generally speaking I would enable in my KERNCONF file (GENERIC, etc. under src/sys/<arch>/conf/) # Turn off debugging symbols makeoptions DEBUG=-g # Debugger support options KDB options DDB options KDB_TRACE If you want to go further, for example you believe this is a locking issue then you can go whole hog and do: # Heavy duty debugger options options DEBUG_LOCKS options INVARIANTS options INVARIANT_SUPPORT options WITNESS options WITNESS_SKIPSPIN Be warned that the kernel.debug KO (kernel object) will run a lot slower than a stock non-debug kernel (the extra metadata the kernel is keeping track off etc.) so there are instances where running a debug kernels could make a timing bug disappear or appear more/less frequently. In any event, if the problem is easily reproducible, I whole-heartily recommend you minimally enable KDB/DDB support so you can dump things on the appropriate list AS WELL AS build a complete debug kernel that may catch the issue (you will see console messages including lock order reversals and other nastiness). Here is some good documentation about kernel debugging: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug.html Let us know how things go, -aps PS Make sure that new disk is good! On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Alain G. Fabry <alainfabry@belgacom.net> wrote: > Have a issue here. I've been running FreeBSD 6.3 release for about 6 months now without problem. Then last week I purchase another external HD and installed release 7.0. > Everything went great for about 3 weeks. Then suddenly my 7.0 started to crash (kde freezing, sudden reboots, etc). The first time happened when I was performing a portsnap on a FreeBSD Qemu session. It came up to the point where this 7.0 installation wasn't workable anymore. > > Since I need to work to earn money as the rest of us, I fell back to my 6.3 release external HD -> copied over my data files and now I'm starting to get the same symthoms. > > Input/output errors, reboot when performing a simple 'man something'. -> could this be a virus or something? > > I'm not sure how or what I can do to find out what could be the cause of this problem? > > Is there anywhere I can find out more about debugging such strange behavior. (everything works fine and then suddenly it freezes permanently or just reboots on its own) > > > Thanks, > > PS: I'm about to reinstall the 7.0 release and hope that that will work normal again. > > Alain > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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