> Scott Plumlee wrote: > > o?= wrote: > >> Hello, > >> > >> My OpenBSD 3.9-stable Box is quite unstable. I don't have physical > >> access to my box so I can't debug it directly. > >> I've recompiled a GENERIC kernel with DEBUG support and > set ddb.panic > >> to 0 in sysctl.conf so that it's rebooting automaticly. > But no kernel > >> dump is made after a kernel panic. I searched on the web without > >> finding a solution. > >> > >> Everytime the kernel panic is different. I tried the -current (and > >> also 3.8). The result is nearly the same: no more kernel > panics but > >> the system freeze but it's still responding to the ping. > > You totally lost me on that one. Something panicked, > something else didn't. > > However, "system freeze but still responds to ping" can also > be a memory exhaustion issue -- all RAM+swap got used, and > all tasks end up getting deadlocked waiting for additional > RAM to become available.
The machine has 1Go of RAM and a swap of 512M, just bind, sshd and pf are running in the box. It's nearly the default install. > > >> > >> As I said before in another mail, this is NOT due to an > hardware failure. > >> Many SAME machines work perfectly. The only difference is the > >> revision of the bios (vcore updated and Pstate disabled). > I want to > >> find the source of the bug to correct it if I could. > > > > I'm still awfully new to *nix, but isn't saying that "it's not > > hardware just because other boxes like this don't fail" the same as > > "my car can't be out of gas because other cars of the same > model are > > still driving by me"? > > pretty darned close. > > > I can understand if you mean that it's not due to an > unsupported piece > > of hardware, in which case I would think the kernel panic > would be the > > same, but how do you know it's not bad <insert your choice > of memory, > > disk, cables, processor, heatsink, fan, etc etc here>? > > Anyone who hasn't seen a broken piece of HW that works fine > with X but not Y is new to the game. Anyone who trusts a HW > diagnostic to "give" > them the answer is really, really new to the game. > > By themselves, diagnostics are like a screwdriver: in the > hands of a knowledgeable person, very useful. In the hands > of an idiot, dangerous. > Without a brain engaged in their use and analysis of the > results, they are just an inert object. > > > The OP already answered his own question (and been told this > by others). > The machine has a buggy BIOS. > One version works, another doesn't. > > Why do you think there is more than one revision? Because > bugs were found. Odds are, those bugs were NOT found on > OpenBSD, they were probably found running Windows, maybe > Linux. OpenBSD *may* expose those bugs more clearly...but > odds are, if you use that same buggy BIOS with another OS, > you may learn to regret it. > > Would it be possible to "fix" OpenBSD to work around this > bug? Maybe. > Completely pointless and self-defeating, however. Fix it for > the buggy BIOS, you probably broke it for the "correct" > BIOS....and now you have a chunk of code usable on precisely > one variant of one bad computer. The code will not be > properly maintained, and will probably do more bad than good > some day in the future, if not immediately. Sometimes buggy > hardware has to be worked around, because no fix is available > or possible from the manufacturer and there is a clear > benefit to adding "special case" code. When a proper fix IS > available from the vendor, it is usually preferable to use it > than to work around it. > > Hey, if this problem turns out to expose a true logic bug in > OpenBSD, go ahead, find it, show us, and get credit for the > fix. But if "everytime the panic is different", it sounds > like things are Just Plain Broke on the system, if a BIOS > upgrade fixes it, sounds like the hardware wasn't set up > properly, and the manufacturer figured that out, and FIXED > THE PROBLEM. But how to explain that ONLY OpenBSD and NetBSD are buggy. Thousand of machines are working fine with FreeBSD, many linux and even windows. Every machine is used in a different manner (streaming server, web server, mail server, cluster, and so on ...) which make me thought that's it's a net/open BSD problem. I'm maybe wrong ... But I don't understand why now ;) ++ Jerome > > Nick. [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/x-pkcs7-signature which had a name of smime.p7s]
