Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:05:42 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Sprickman <spork@fasttrackmonkey.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: 4.8 "Alternate system clock has died" error Message-ID: <Pine.OSX.4.61.0511182152380.2298@gee5.nat.fasttrackmonkey.com>
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Hello, I tried this query on -stable, hoping someone here can help me further understand and troubleshoot this. Reference: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.stable/32837 In short, top, ps report 0% CPU on all processes as of a few weeks ago. "systat -vmstat" hands out the "Alternate system clock has died" error. Box is running 4.8-p24 and has been up 425 days. Nothing out of the ordinary except for the above symptoms. In searching the various lists/newsgroups, it seems that the other folks with this problem have fixed it in various ways: -early 4.x users referenced a PR that was committed before 4.8 -some 5.3 users reported this with unknown resolution/cause -sending init a HUP was suggested (tried it, no luck) -setting kern.timecounter.method: 1 (tried it, no luck) -one user seemed to actually have a dead timer In the stable thread one person answered, and they were the sole example I could find of a true hardware failure. The odds are in my favor that it's a software issue I think... My hardware that I was given is probably a bit uncommon; it's an SMP Athlon box (Tyan S2462 THUNDER K7), probably not the most widely-tested platform. The -stable poster had a warning that if the RTC is bad, the machine likely won't come back up if I boot it. That has me very worried as this box is very important (mail server). Can anyone help me determine if this is a hardware problem? If it is, I really need to stretch the budget and dig up some new hardware to transplant everything into. Dmesg is in the linked thread. If there's any other info I can provide, let me know. Thanks, Charles
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