From owner-freebsd-stable  Sat Apr 27 08:10:46 1996
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To: nash@mcs.com
cc: stable@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: vnode_pager_output: attempt to write meta-data 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 27 Apr 1996 08:30:41 CDT."
             <199604271330.IAA19054@zen.nash.org> 
From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
Reply-To: davidg@Root.COM
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 08:10:45 -0700
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>This message popped up this morning in my syslog:
>
>   vnode_pager_output: attempt to write meta-data!!! -- 0xfffe8000(ff)
>
>Which comes from vnode_pager_output (vm/vnode_pager.c):
>
>        if ((int) m[0]->offset < 0) {
>                printf("vnode_pager_output: attempt to write meta-data!!! -- 0x%x(%x)\n", m[0]->offset, m[0]->dirty);
>                rtvals[0] = VM_PAGER_BAD;
>                return VM_PAGER_BAD;
>        }
>
>Do I assume correctly that the system is in an unstable state and I
>should now reboot?

   No, it simply indicates that we somehow detected that a meta-data page was
modified. It's a fairly benign bug that is believed to be fixed in the latest
changes to pmap.c. I do recommend re-supping -stable, however, to pick up the
fixes.

-DG

David Greenman
Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project