From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jul 28 21:07:15 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0CF681065670 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:07:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mirror176@cox.net) Received: from fed1rmmtao106.cox.net (fed1rmmtao106.cox.net [68.230.241.40]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD8288FC16 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:07:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mirror176@cox.net) Received: from fed1rmimpo02.cox.net ([70.169.32.72]) by fed1rmmtao106.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20090728210715.DMYI25927.fed1rmmtao106.cox.net@fed1rmimpo02.cox.net> for ; Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:07:15 -0400 Received: from darkstar.l.net ([98.165.138.223]) by fed1rmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id MZ7E1c0024pNzHu04Z7EFY; Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:07:14 -0400 X-VR-Score: -90.00 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=6wBvBrFavHgA:10 a=rhOQtCvr5S9Pv6V2WCYA:9 a=X8vIrZJ-eYJ9NhLJqgHXolJOI0oA:4 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) (uid 1001) by darkstar.l.net with local; Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:07:13 -0700 id 00017A53.4A6F6881.0000EF9A From: "Edward Sanford Sutton, III" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:07:13 -0700 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200907281407.13445.mirror176@cox.net> Subject: fsck and dump freeze freebsd. any ideas? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:07:15 -0000 After one of the last crashes, the system would lock up a short time after rebooting. I found the problem caused by background fsck locking up the system. I took the partition out of the startup check for now. I 'think' I was installing a port during the last crash, but it has been a while. I performed a fsck and a dump (to /dev/null) confirming that both do crash the freebsd 7.2 and 6.2 (which I booted off of a separate drive). A tar to /dev/null did run successfully, but I recall reading that that is not a recommended way to backup/move a filesystem. The /usr partition where it causes trouble is in a raid5 geom_vinum three drive array. I did not yet have the array rebuild the parity nor do I know if there is any advantage/disadvantage in doing so (for this problem). I ran a long test on the drives using smartctl (which is a safer surface check than dd because 1 bad sector on my promise controller will cause a panic; I have an unrelated drive with a corrupted sector if the promise controller dirver has an interested maintainer.) When running fsck, it is somewhere within phase 1 when it crashes. I ran a truss run of fsck with -aedD and snapped a photo of my screen when it crashed which I can type up if it is of any use. At the time of freebsd freezing, the hard drive activity light goes from a faint flicker to on solid for about a second and then goes out. The system is completely unresponsive where it locks showing no sign of activity that I have been able to notice. I imagine the recommendation is start over, but before I do (and likely just try a tar backup/restore), are there any other suggestions and questions before I blow away the problem? It would be nice for freebsd users to not be able to run into such a problem. As a final question, is there any safe way to crash freebsd (or pull system power) without a risk of filesystem corruption?