From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 11 15:44:15 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 77A7116A4CE for ; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:44:15 +0000 (GMT) Received: from math.missouri.edu (math.missouri.edu [128.206.49.180]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2250043D31 for ; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:44:15 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from stephen@math.missouri.edu) Received: from [128.206.49.166] (cauchy.math.missouri.edu [128.206.49.166]) by math.missouri.edu (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j2BFiAGR010636; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 09:44:10 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from stephen@math.missouri.edu) Message-ID: <4231BCCA.5080306@math.missouri.edu> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 09:44:10 -0600 From: Stephen Montgomery-Smith Organization: University of Missouri User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20050216 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bob Johnson References: <4231B362.5070800@eng.ufl.edu> In-Reply-To: <4231B362.5070800@eng.ufl.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=no version=2.63 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on math.missouri.edu X-Virus-Scanned: clamd / ClamAV version 0.71, clamav-milter version 0.71 X-Virus-Status: Clean cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Panic - cannot get a dump X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:44:15 -0000 Bob Johnson wrote: > > Any chance your RAID array is built from two-year-old Western Digital > drives? Your problem sounds a lot like the one discussed here: > http://adam.kungfoohampster.com/lists/freebsd-questions/msg18877.shtml > > The message above doesn't mention it, but the WD KB article also > includes a fix for drives on 3Ware controllers. > Probably this is not the problem. I have Seagate drives, and the symptoms seem to be different - I have a panic, not a freeze. Although I am having problems with the disk when I reboot. The program I am running outputs a "data.check" file every second or so, so that when the program is restarted it can pick up where it left. The code to do this is something like check_point = open("data.check-tmp",O_WRONLY|O_TRUNC|O_CREAT,0644); write(check_point,lots-of-stuff); close(check_point); rename("data.check-tmp","data.check"); What I find is that after the panic the file "data.check" is several days old. I am guessing it is because the IDE Seagate disk has some cache that it doesn't write back to the disk - probably it is the directory itself which is not properly updated. It is a bit annoying, but I can live with this. But maybe this indicates something more sinister. I have put in another IDE disk whose only purpose is to be the disk to dump to. Hopefully I will be able to catch a good dump on that. -- Stephen Montgomery-Smith stephen@math.missouri.edu http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen