Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 19:17:43 -0700 From: David Greenman <dg@root.com> To: cgd@netbsd.org (Chris G. Demetriou) Cc: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>, Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>, Chris Csanady <ccsanady@friley-185-114.res.iastate.edu>, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: kernel traps on boot.. Message-ID: <199810150217.TAA06537@implode.root.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "14 Oct 1998 18:59:18 PDT." <8767dmoaa1.fsf@netbsd1.cygnus.com>
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>However, if it _is_ well tested, "production quality," and still runs >into that unaligned access, then that unaligned access is probably >indicative of a somewhat-serious bug. It means either that code is >getting a bogus value because of specification/implementation "issue," >or that something, somewhere got corrupted, and therefore the system >lost. I don't agree with that. >To have such bugs fixed properly, in many cases, a developer will need >to know more about the context in which it occurred than just the fact >that it occurred, the PC, and a few registers. That means panic, >followed by kernel core dump (or invocation of kernel debugger, or >whatever), which then gets handed by the user of the production system >to a developer, who debugs it. > >In my opinion, it's not only bad, but _irresponsible_ to let the >system bumble on in the face of such a bug. High uptime is nice, but >if it comes at the cost of ignoring serious system errors or >corrupting data, it's worthless. We have lot's of diagnostic code in FreeBSD to panic on various internal inconsistencies. An unaligned reference, in my experiance, is usually not something to be worried about. My opinion, of course, and you're welcome to your's. -DG David Greenman Co-founder/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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