From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Oct 7 4:49:46 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from horizon2.webcentral.com.au (horizon2.webcentral.com.au [202.139.235.196]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0EDE214EE9 for ; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 04:49:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wyldephyre@telebot.net) Received: (qmail 1198 invoked from network); 7 Oct 1999 11:49:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO timberwolf) (203.147.197.230) by horizon2.webcentral.com.au with SMTP; 7 Oct 1999 11:49:27 -0000 Message-ID: <009001bf10bb$fba84160$e6c593cb@timberwolf> Reply-To: "Haikal Saadh" From: "Haikal Saadh" To: "Colin Campbell" Cc: References: Subject: Re: freebsd v bsdi v linux Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 22:03:34 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG ----- Original Message ----- From: Colin Campbell To: Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 8:38 AM Subject: freebsd v bsdi v linux > Hi, > > Had an interesting installtion problem that has just been solved. > > Machine is a PIII 450 with 512MB (4x128)RAM. During installation of 3.2 > from the WC CD I'd get a wite failure or a panic of the machine or both. > With 3.3 using NFS I just got a machine panic. These always happened > during the bin dist unpacking. > > I tried RedHat 6.0 and the system panicked half way through the > installation. > > The machine came with BSDI 3.1 on it. When I booted it for the first time > I noticed that the system was reporting only 128MB RAM. Just BSDI > weirdness I thought. Despite the repeated FreeBSD and Linux failures I was > always able to install BSDI, but the system always reported 128MB RAM. > Nothing dawned on me from this. > > Anyway, I started pulling DIMMs from the box. With only slot 1 occupied > FreeBSD installed no problems. I pulled that DIMM and put two others in. > No problems. Added the first one to give 384MB, no problems. Put the > untested DIMM in and the machine wouldn't even boot! Hmm bad memory! > > To test a theory I then installed BSDI 3.1 again. Interestingly it now > reported 384MB RAM. This now leads me to my question: > > What is BSDI doing that made it recognise the bad memory in slot 2, and > hence only work with the first 128MB, that Linux and more importantly > FreeBSD are NOT doing? Anyone think it's a useful enough feature to be > added to the system? It measn that if you think you have xMB and the OS > comes up with yMB you might have a problem. Personally, I'm all for it, as I am (was?) having ther same problem..I've got a scavenged p200MMX with 64Megs of RAM that I was hoping to deploy as a proxy/firwall for my home network (2 clients), unfortunately, FreeBSD (3.2) reports panic:GPFs , tries to sync disks, gives up, and reboots. All red hat did was go :Aiee! [something about stopping the interrupt handler] and hang. I was really looking forward to setting that box up, but I'm gonna have to wait till the RAM prices go down again. (AUD400 for 64 megs????) Sorry if that was a rant... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message