Date: Tue, 09 Feb 99 18:26:06 -0800 From: Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@rahul.net> To: <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Spontaneous reboots Message-ID: <199902100226.AA08300@waltz.rahul.net> In-Reply-To: Message from "Thomas T. Veldhouse" <veldy@visi.com> of Tue, 09 Feb 99 08:28:31 -0600
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I have a machine running 3.0-stable that reboots once every 2-3 days.
I had crash dumps disabled, and there was no hint in /var/log/messages
about why it rebooted. So I enabled crash dumps by setting
dumpdev="/dev/da0s1b"
in rc.conf.
The next time the machine rebooted, I happened to have a video display
connected to it and I happened to be nearbuy, and I saw the error
message 'page fault in kernel mode" (or something similar). I had to
run elsewhere while this was going on, so I missed the display during
the filesystem sync and reboot that followed. Later I checked
/var/log/messages and the only unusual thing I saw was the error
message:
savecore: no core dump
and no other mention of any reason for the crash dump.
I checked rc.conf and so far as I can tell crash dumps are enabled,
and savecore goes to /var/crash, and there is 300 M free on it, and
/var/crash/minfree says '2048'. I typed 'sysctl kern.dumpdev' and got
'kern.dumpdev: { major = 4, minor = 131073 }' which indicates that crash
dumps are definitely enabled. I did 'ls -l /dev/da0s1b' (since da0s1b
is my swap and dump device) and got:
brw-r----- 1 root operator 4, 0x00020001 Jan 25 20:11 /dev/da0s1b
which I think matches the output from sysctl above.
da0s1b has 512M while physical memory is only 256M, so there should be
plenty of space for the crash dump.
More later if/when I get more info.
BTW, SunOS does not require crash dumps to be enabled in order to find
out the reason for the crash. SunOS logs a kernel backtrace into
/var/log/messages after each panic. I don't think FreeBSD does. It
would be nice if the panic message and a stack dump could be saved
whether or not a full crash dump is being saved.
Rahul
> Date: Tue, 09 Feb 99 08:28:31 CST
> From: "Thomas T. Veldhouse" <veldy@visi.com>
> To: "FreeBSD-Stable" <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG>
> Message-Id: <005901be5438$778ccad0$236319ac@w142844.carlson.com>
> Subject: Spontaneous reboots
> My FreeBSD-Stable-3.0 machine has been spontaneously rebooting every few
> hours now for the last few weeks. I do routine build worlds to try and
> avoid this, but it still does it. There have been very few complaints about
> this, so I have been suspecting my hardware. However, I have not been able
> to find any errant hardware. I have noticed a few people on the lists
> complain of the same problem, all the way back to 3.0-RELEASE. As of this
> morning the machine has not rebooted in 12 hours, which is nearly a record.
> However, there is one difference, I put Linux on there in the hopes of
> either getting a more verbose hardware message or whatever, I don't know
> what I hoped. I can say that it has displayed no symptoms since the
> "downgrade". Anyway, there is obviously something going on here that shows
> up on other peoples' machines from time to time that I hope does not make it
> into the release. Here is my hardware configuration if it matters:
>
> 486 DX4 - 100MHz
> 20 MB Memory
> 220MB Hard-Drive
> 325MB Hard-Drive
> 2 - Linksys Ethernet ISA Cards (new)
>
> I suspect the issue is with the driver for the Linksys cards (ed0), as it
> would sometimes reboot as soon as I made a connection to the box via telnet
> or ssh, other times it would reboot when transfering alot of data across the
> network or from the Internet.
>
> Tom Veldhouse
> veldy@visi.com
>
>
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