On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 10:59:58AM +0200, Federico Giannici wrote:
> As I have already told in a couple of previous emails, I'm experiencing
> occasional computer freezes (the PC lockups with no error at all, and I
> can only reset it).
>
> I replaced all the hardware (motherboard, cpu, ram, disc controller,
> etc...) and upgraded to 3.9 and now to -current of some days ago. But it
> keeps freezing...
>
> The pc freezes (but only occasionally) during dumps of the entire
> filesystem, using the system "dump" program. The dump is done while the
> system is in use, so files may change during the dump.
>
> Yesterday another PC freezed!
> I noticed that it occurred just at the time that a copy of a directory
> was done, this time by means of the "tar" program. This time too the
> backed-up files were in use and probably written.
>
> So, all these clues make me think that if a file is dumped (readed, in
> particular by "dump" and "tar") while it is written, it can make the
> system froze-up.
>
> Please note that both PCs have softupdates enabled.
I have five boxes which do nightly backups, and while they are not
excessively busy at night - in fact, almost idle, but some mailing list
traffic is still coming in, logs are rotated, and so on - I've never
seen one freeze (okay, one, once, but that was due to a faulty em(4)).
These systems run 3.8 (x2), 3.9 (x1), and a recent -current (x2).
So, I don't think the software is at fault. Of course, that's not
terribly helpful. You might want to try on a different box; it's usually
possible to scrounge up an old one by asking around.
On a side note, I've heard of bad power supplies giving the most strange
errors imaginable - have you looked at that, especially if you've been
putting a lot of hardware (disks?) in the box lately?
Joachim
