Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:13:06 +0200 (CEST) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, greg.lane@internode.on.net Subject: Re: kernel panic(?) trying to copy data off failed drive with dd Message-ID: <200606121213.k5CCD6K8062882@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <20060612115933.GB10678@router.lane.family>
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Greg Lane <greg.lane@internode.on.net> wrote: > Michael P. Soulier <msoulier@digitaltorque.ca> wrote: > > > > Regardless, file a bug report. The box should never hang, or reboot. > > Is this the case? I had another box (a piece of crap I played around on) > that had a failing disk, and this would bring the machine down. So I didn't > think this was necessarily unusual. However, on the previous occasion the disk > was the root file system with swap on it, whereas in this case, the disk is > only a data disk, not any part of the OS. > > Are you saying that the box should never hang or reboot, but should > recover from the error, and whatever command was running should fail and > return an error message? It depends. Usually the system should _not_ panic in case of software errors. For example, when running fsck on a broken file system, it should not cause a panic. However, mounting a broken file system might cause a panic or other misbehaviour, which is clearly documented as a bug in the mount(8) manpage: "It is possible for a corrupted file system to cause a crash." However, in the case of hardware failures (including broken disk drives), anything bad can happen, ranging from silent data corruption to panics or cold freezes. Any many cases the operating system simply has no chance to deal with it properly. So, if your panic is caused purely by software error, and it's not already known and documented, filing a PR might be a good idea. But if faulty hardware is involved, sending a PR is probably useless. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. "A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do." -- Dennis M. Ritchie
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