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Date:      Thu, 30 Dec 2004 00:55:55 +0100
From:      Christian R. <cr@it.dk>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Memory handling problem with FreeBSD 5.3?
Message-ID:  <2rg6t0ll6th99497btiu13foetanfrn0gr@4ax.com>

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I have installed FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE i386 on a new Dell PowerEdge 2850,
but it crashes under load like "make buildworld" with a "panic: page
fault".

The server has following configuration: 2x Intel Xeon 3.4 GHz (800 MHz
=46SB), 6x 1 GB DDR2 ECC RAM and Perc 4e/Di (LSI Logic/amr driver).

After some days working on the problem, I think there is some problem
with handling the memory. The only way I have got the server to become
stable was by switching a special option in the Dell BIOS, which
limits the system memory to 256 MB.

I have tried to limit the memory to 4 GB by activating a spare memory
bank, but the server still crashes. Disabling HTT in BIOS and ACPI in
the loader also didn't solved the problem.

The kernel is compiled with SMP of course and PAE because of >4 GB
memory. I have removed all the unnecessary devices.

Dells own diagnostic tool couldn't find any hardware errors. The
special memory test also passed all tests. I have also tried with
memtest (http://www.memtest.org/) which either could find any memory
errors.

Has anyone an idea to a solution? Has anyone succeeded running FreeBSD
5.3 on similar hardware?

Would it maybe be better to run the AMD64 version of FreeBSD 5.3? I
think the i386 version should be more stable?



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