From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jul 28 21:50:46 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F1A8916A4CE for ; Wed, 28 Jul 2004 21:50:45 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtp.nildram.co.uk (smtp.nildram.co.uk [195.112.4.54]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 888DC43D58 for ; Wed, 28 Jul 2004 21:50:45 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mark@ukug.uk.freebsd.org) Received: from [192.168.254.25] (parish.gotadsl.co.uk [62.3.235.43]) by smtp.nildram.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id E4DD22551AB for ; Wed, 28 Jul 2004 22:50:28 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: <41081FBE.5080401@ukug.uk.freebsd.org> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 22:50:54 +0100 From: Mark Ovens User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 7.0 (X11/20040726) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: [Fwd: Re: Random Freeze] X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 21:50:46 -0000 Paul Mather wrote: > Mark, > > When you do, look for PREEMPTION. That should speed up the search. :-) > Yes, I searched the mailing lsts and found it, deleted #define PREEMPTION from sys/i38i6/include/param.h, rebuilt my kernel and the machine has been up for 13 hours now :-) Only thing is the screensaver hangs after ~5 minutes (that had me worried the first time it happened), but that's not really important. > Seriously, though, -CURRENT has been going through some major > instability the last fortnight or so. One thesis is that the > pre-emption code added has either introduced or uncovered some obscure > bugs. The net effect has been random freezes---most often reported is > when under load or doing something (e.g., rendering a complicated page) > using Mozilla, or when using XMMS. > The two apps I probably use the most! > One suggestion, until the culprit has been found, is to rebuild without > PREEMPTION (undef it in /usr/src/sys/i386/include/param.h). That has > certainly stopped the freezes in my case. > Me too. > If you're running -CURRENT, it is advisable to subscribe to the > freebsd-current mailing list---if nothing else but to be apprised of > ongoing problems like this, or to get a heads-up about possible future > instability caused by major repository/functionality changes. (For > example, today there was a heads-up about the GCC 3.4 import being done > [which seems to have broken things temporarily].) > I have done now. I'm only running -CURRENT because this is a dual CPU box and when I built it back in December what I was readin on the lists suggested that 5-STABLE was only a few months away and, since SMP support in 5.x is superior to 4.x, I figured upgrading 5-CURRENT->5-STABLE would be easier than 4-STABLE->%-STABLE. As soon as we get a 5-STABLE that's what I'll run. Thanks for your input. Regards, Mark > Cheers, > > Paul.