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Date:      Sun, 17 May 2009 09:13:40 -0400
From:      Doug Lee <dgl@dlee.org>
To:        Glen Barber <glen.j.barber@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 4.11 panic every 23 hours 55 minutes or so
Message-ID:  <20090517131340.GD2706@mini.local>
In-Reply-To: <4ad871310905170439o678e2a9dp1c09be26ed9afc75@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <20090517110657.GC2706@mini.local> <4ad871310905170439o678e2a9dp1c09be26ed9afc75@mail.gmail.com>

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On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 07:39:46AM -0400, Glen Barber wrote:
> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 7:06 AM, Doug Lee <dgl@dlee.org> wrote:
> > One of the weirder things I've seen in a while here...
> >
> > OS: FreeBSD 4.11 (yeah I know, old, but generally stable)
> > CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz
> > real memory ?= 536608768 (524032K bytes)
> > Hds: IDE
> >

> Do you by chance have the kernel built with debugging enabled?

Afraid not, nor much space in / for that.  I partitioned this system
before /modules arrived, and I barely have enough space in / now
(about 3 meg free).  That shouldn't affect this issue though; I do
have separate /usr, /var, and /tmp.  I do mount /tmp and /var/run via
MFS.

> > Problem: ?Ever since a suspitious power outage (I say suspitious
> > because we think a surge was also involved), this box has been
> > exhibiting kernel panics about every 23 hours 55 minutes, give or
> > take about 4 minutes either way. ?Obviously hardware is suspect,
> > and hopefully in line for upgrade; but as FreeBSD has always proven
> > so stable for me, I'm curious what on earth could cause this sort
> > of regular panic?
> >
> > It's not time of day; if I reboot at 2:00 AM, 3:55 PM, or any other
> > time, it's 23:55 or so later I get a panic, whenever that may be.
> > I think this rules out cron jobs, external attacks, and load-based
> > issues.
> >

> Perhaps a bad CMOS battery causing the system time to become
> corrupted?  (I know it's a long shot...)

Interesting idea, though I'd be surprised since I think the system
time is set via ntpd, is it not?  `date' seems to recover nicely every
time anyway.  A power surge could indeed play with CMOS though... but
how would I test for this while the system is running?

-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl@dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group           doug.lee@ssbbartgroup.com   http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
"Pray devoutly, but hammer stoutly."
--Sir William G. Benham



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