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Date:      Fri, 15 Mar 2002 10:30:43 -0800
From:      "Drew Tomlinson" <drew@mykitchentable.net>
To:        "Drew Tomlinson" <drew@mykitchentable.net>, <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: System Lock Up - How To Troubleshoot?
Message-ID:  <020a01c1cc4f$84ba0230$f82a6ba5@lc.ca.gov>
References:  <002d01c1c4d3$92a3dac0$0301a8c0@bigdaddy>

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Drew Tomlinson" <drew@mykitchentable.net>
To: <questions@freebsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 9:55 PM
Subject: System Lock Up - How To Troubleshoot?


> I have a 486 machine that I have used as a firewall for the past year.
> It has been very stable until recently.  Four days ago, it locked up.
> No response from either the network or the serial console.  Nada,
> nothing.
>
> So I powered it down and back up.  It booted fine and fsck took care
> of the disk problems on reboot.  I looked in /var/log/messages (all
> console messages are directed there) and found no errors so I just
> shrugged my shoulders and didn't worry about it.
>
> Now four days later, the machine locked up again.  Same thing, no
> response.  After power cycling, there were no errors in
> /var/log/messages.  I upgraded from 4.4-RELEASE to 4.5-RELEASE on or
> about Feb. 18.  Other than that, there have been no changes.  What can
> I do to determine what the problem might be?  Are there any diagnostic
> tools in the ports I should try?  I'm really at a loss here as to
> where I should start.  Any suggestions appreciated.

I've gotten a little farther in troubleshooting this problem.  I was
able to get all console output logged to a file.  Apparently not *all*
console message were being directed to /var/log/messages.  Anyway, I
found these two entries in the log:

Mar  8 02:25:14 blacksheep /kernel: pid 5912 (make), uid 0: exited on
signal 11 (core dumped)
Mar  8 02:33:54 blacksheep /kernel: pid 10521 (make), uid 0: exited on
signal 11 (core dumped)

These entries correspond to a cron job that updates my ports tree
nightly.  Looks like the offending command is
/usr/local/sbin/portsdb -uU.  Here is the contents of the script:

blacksheep# cat /usr/local/scripts/cvsup_ports.sh
#! /bin/sh

# 12/04/01
# Created script to update ports tree and then run portsdb to update the
ports
# database index files.  Used to just run the ports update but then
learned
# about updating the index from freebsd questions list.  See message
dated
# 12/4/01 by Gary Swearingen with subject "Re: portupgrade question".
From
# the message:
#
# If you read the man pages of "portsdb" and "pkgdepfix" you'll see some
# warnings about running those tools occasionally (?) to keep the
package
# database in shape.  (What's up with that?)  And, IIRC, that you do it
# before using portupgrade.  Life on the (b)leading edge...
#
# P.S. portsdb takes a very long time (30-60 min?) on my 500 MHz system.

# CVSup the ports tree
echo "`date`" >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log
echo "Updating ports tree..." >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log
/usr/local/bin/cvsup -L2 /usr/sup/ports-supfile >>
/var/log/cvsup-ports.log
echo "`date`" >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log

## 3/8/02
## Commented out following code as the update seems to crash the
BLACKSHEEP.
### Update the indexes
##echo "Updating indexes..." >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log
##/usr/local/sbin/portsdb -uU >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log
##echo "Index update completed" >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log
##echo "`date`" >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log
##echo "" >> /var/log/cvsup-ports.log

So I suspect the next thing to do would be to analyze the core dump?
I've never done such a thing before.  Can anyone point me to a "Core
Dump for Dummies" link?  Or should I try something else?

Thanks,

Drew


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