Re: Sudden Reboots
On Friday 01 October 2004 11:34 pm, Bruce R. Montague wrote: > Hi, re: > > The odd thing was that it was happening at virtualy > > the same time every morning > > [...] > > Then, they both just *stopped doing it by themselves* with no apparent > > correlation to anything installed software-wise. Neither server has had > > any problem for over a year now. > > * What was the external power situation, grounding, > static situation, or other "noise"? Was the UPS or > power-conditioning OK? Same rack, same UPS as all the other Dell 2650 servers. Same ethernet switches, etc. Same UPS. > Any large radars nearby? :) Nope.. > Radars have actually been known to matter. I once > knew a system that died like this and it turned out > to be because it was mounted three floors above a > loading dock... a ROM pin or somesuch was doing a > great job as a vibration detector, whenever trucks > backed into the dock hard. > > Which brings up the question, what's the cheapest/best > way these days to atually monitor high-res > sags/spikes/sags on the line into a box? Decades ago > it was a Drantez meter; I see they're still around: > www.dranetz-bmi.com You used to be able to get the power company to come out and put recording voltmeters on the line if you complained loudly enough.. > > Does anyone have any such "line-monitor" unit that > they particularly recommend as a good low-end buy? > > > * Handwaving general remark about VM space overhead... > Early virtual memory systems rapidly ran into the > problem that all of physical memory became consummed > by page tables. The solution was to page the page > tables (which is why modern architectures support > hierarchies of page tables). As systems become larger > this solution typically becomes less-and-less > effective, because each page in every _virtual_ > address space requires a page table entry. If you > have many large addresses spaces, this requires many > page table entries total (this acts as pressure to > make pages larger). The page tables become large > data structures; managing them (keeping parts in > memory when needed) can become a bottleneck. If you > have other restrictions (the page tables have to fit > in an address space segment, say, a kernel data > segment), the virtual space allocated for this data > structure can become exhausted. A kernel usually > needs to have page tables that can map every page > of physical memory, so for this page table, the more > physical memory present, the larger the table. > > Page tables are used because they allow a page table > entry to be accessed via a simple addition based > on most of the virtual address. This is fast. > > As address spaces grow above 32-bits, the potential > size of the page tables becomes more important. For > very large address spaces some form of "single-level > store" or "inverted page table" scheme is often > proposed. Instead of having a page table entry for > each page of virtual address space, these systems > have the equivalent of a page table entry for each > page of _physical_ memory. All addresses are effectively > disk-block+offset addresses; the virtual memory > hardware does an associative search to locate the > physical block in memory that corresponds to the > disk-block. This requires more expensive hardware > then a simple addition, but such systems only require > a page table entry for every page of physical memory. > These systems have been built from early days, but > are typically not competitive with VM systems that > require simple addition. (I think the IBM AS/400 is > the only widely-used commercial hardware using this > approach) At some point address space growth, cheap > associative lookup memories, and required page table > size may make this approach competitive. Yes, wow...you're dragging me back to CS-401 or whatever. We had a page fault indicating meter that you played around with different algorithms on and tried to get it to read lower. I think it was on a PDP-40. (Wow..am I old). > Thanks to all for the suggestions. I'm still not totally convinced it's hardware. Try googling for "FreeBSD Sudden Reboot" and you'll see a lot of the same syndrome. BTW, healthd is running on that box and show this: Temp.= 49.0, 41.5, 0.0; Rot.= 5113,0,0 Vcore = 1.71, 0.00; Volt. = 3.34, 4.89, 12.04, -1.78, -0.91 that's all well within limits. The two temps are proc and chip set. The rest is pretty self-explanatory. Once again...much appreciated all who commented. -- -Jim ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
Hi, re: > The odd thing was that it was happening at virtualy > the same time every morning > [...] > Then, they both just *stopped doing it by themselves* with no apparent > correlation to anything installed software-wise. Neither server has had any > problem for over a year now. * What was the external power situation, grounding, static situation, or other "noise"? Was the UPS or power-conditioning OK? Any large radars nearby? :) Radars have actually been known to matter. I once knew a system that died like this and it turned out to be because it was mounted three floors above a loading dock... a ROM pin or somesuch was doing a great job as a vibration detector, whenever trucks backed into the dock hard. Which brings up the question, what's the cheapest/best way these days to atually monitor high-res sags/spikes/sags on the line into a box? Decades ago it was a Drantez meter; I see they're still around: www.dranetz-bmi.com Does anyone have any such "line-monitor" unit that they particularly recommend as a good low-end buy? * Handwaving general remark about VM space overhead... Early virtual memory systems rapidly ran into the problem that all of physical memory became consummed by page tables. The solution was to page the page tables (which is why modern architectures support hierarchies of page tables). As systems become larger this solution typically becomes less-and-less effective, because each page in every _virtual_ address space requires a page table entry. If you have many large addresses spaces, this requires many page table entries total (this acts as pressure to make pages larger). The page tables become large data structures; managing them (keeping parts in memory when needed) can become a bottleneck. If you have other restrictions (the page tables have to fit in an address space segment, say, a kernel data segment), the virtual space allocated for this data structure can become exhausted. A kernel usually needs to have page tables that can map every page of physical memory, so for this page table, the more physical memory present, the larger the table. Page tables are used because they allow a page table entry to be accessed via a simple addition based on most of the virtual address. This is fast. As address spaces grow above 32-bits, the potential size of the page tables becomes more important. For very large address spaces some form of "single-level store" or "inverted page table" scheme is often proposed. Instead of having a page table entry for each page of virtual address space, these systems have the equivalent of a page table entry for each page of _physical_ memory. All addresses are effectively disk-block+offset addresses; the virtual memory hardware does an associative search to locate the physical block in memory that corresponds to the disk-block. This requires more expensive hardware then a simple addition, but such systems only require a page table entry for every page of physical memory. These systems have been built from early days, but are typically not competitive with VM systems that require simple addition. (I think the IBM AS/400 is the only widely-used commercial hardware using this approach) At some point address space growth, cheap associative lookup memories, and required page table size may make this approach competitive. - bruce ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
On Oct 1, 2004, at 7:23 PM, Jim Durham wrote: These are very rare except they seem to happen about once a day for a while and then stop... very strange.. and usually caused by hardware problems (e.g. faulty power supply, overheating CPU, bad RAM). Possible, but if so, the hardware fixed itself on the first two boxes I mentioned. All of this can be bad, or not quite bad -- just not healthy -- hardware. Say a power supply that can't supply reliable +5, when the line voltage drops a tad while all the disks are being hammered. It can be a nightmare to figure out. Setup crash dumps, but also make sure that the UPS the box is attached to isn't having problems. If it's not on conditioned power, fix that. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Amazing.
I just want to drop a line to you folks (and to Bill Paul in particular) to express my appreciation for your work. I received my new laptop today after my old one finally succumbed to a combination of old age and ancient coffee spills. I installed 5.3-BETA6 on it immediately, no trouble, it knew about the Broadcom NIC out of the box and I did a quick check to learn how to set up ndis so I could use the Dell (actually Broadcom) wireless NIC as well. Built ndis, converted the Windows driver, built if_ndis, installed it, loaded it, configured the interface, ran dhclient and I'm using it as I type this. Took maybe an hour, including burning the driver and /usr/src on a DVD to carry into the living room. I was so impressed that I just had to write and say so. Kudos to you guys. You do good work. After having had to deal with the insides of Linux for the last year, it's a pleasure to use a system that is built with such professionalism. Thanks! -- Frank Mayhar [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/ http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
Jim Durham writes: [ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ] | On Friday 01 October 2004 12:36 pm, Doug Ambrisko wrote: | > Jim Durham writes: | > | I have had this problem now with at least 3 FreeBSD servers over a period | > | of about 2 years. I had put it down to some hardware problem but it seems | > | to be too much of a coincidence with 3 different machines doing the same | > | thing. | | > How much memory are in these system?. | The Dell is a Dual Xeon 2650 with 2gb or Ram. The ISP's box has only 256 megs | or ram and the business customer's box has 512. That shouldn't be much of an issue then | > If you have 3G or more you end | > up with very little left for the kernel in the 2G space | | Can you elaborate on why this is? I did somewhat here: | > If you only have a few meg. left it doesn't take many processes to | > fork etc. then you machine blows up. The bge driver for example takes | > 4M each for the jumbo packet handling. You can recover some of this | > memory via loader.conf tunables or bump KVA_PAGES in your kernel | > config file. Still once this memory is put into the zone allocator | > (vmstat -z) in -stable it is gone from the system even if that bucket | > isn't fully used or needed :-( Most of these zones scale based on total memory which. | What would you expect to see in the logs on such a scenario? I'm surprised to | see nothing. Unless you have kernel dumps and savecore settup you will miss the panic. When a system panics it can't right our to /var/log/* | > Ironically the more memory you put in a system the less you can do with | > the system! | > | > A lot of people are starting to run into this problem since large memory | > machines are cheap. | | Well, I don't think 2gb is large by your standards? No it isn't. 3-4G machines start to hit this. Also if you bump up things like mbufs and cluster you start to hit this limit. Doug A. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 08:37:34PM -0400, Jim Durham wrote: > On Friday 01 October 2004 06:38 pm, Kris Kennaway wrote: > > > Do you have ddb enabled? > > I just recompiled the kernel (4.10 patchlevel 3) and installed it. It's in use > right now and I can't reboot it, but it may do so for me! 8- ). If not, > I'll do it early tommorow AM. I used options DDB and DDB_UNATTENDED as there > is no one at that site who knows anything about *nix servers and I need it to > come back up if it panics.. Well, DDB_UNATTENDED cancels out the benefit of being able to investigate the system when it crashes ;-) Set up crashdumps instead, or a serial console. Kris pgpiyg8RSDfP5.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Sudden Reboots
On Friday 01 October 2004 06:38 pm, Kris Kennaway wrote: > Do you have ddb enabled? I just recompiled the kernel (4.10 patchlevel 3) and installed it. It's in use right now and I can't reboot it, but it may do so for me! 8- ). If not, I'll do it early tommorow AM. I used options DDB and DDB_UNATTENDED as there is no one at that site who knows anything about *nix servers and I need it to come back up if it panics.. -- -Jim ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 08:23:04PM -0400, Jim Durham wrote: > > Actual "spontaneous reboots" are very rare > > These are very rare except they seem to happen about once a day for a > while and then stop... very strange.. > > > and usually caused by hardware problems (e.g. faulty power supply, > > overheating CPU, bad RAM). > > Possible, but if so, the hardware fixed itself on the first two boxes I > mentioned. Consistent with marginal hardware issues (heating, poorly seated PCI cards, fluctuating power supply, ...). > > Enable DDB, and see what happens the next > > time it crashes. > > I'll try that on the one that's doing it now. Any suggestions as to how to log > this to get the moset info ? Set up a serial console and use that. It's well-documented in the handbook and developer's handbook. Kris pgpGB3FhKMwSO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Sudden Reboots
On Friday 01 October 2004 06:38 pm, Kris Kennaway wrote: > On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 10:03:00AM -0400, Jim Durham wrote: > > I have had this problem now with at least 3 FreeBSD servers over a period > > of about 2 years. I had put it down to some hardware problem but it seems > > to be too much of a coincidence with 3 different machines doing the same > > thing. > > > > The first time was when I put 4.5-RELEASE on a brand new Dell Poweredge > > 2650. I ran it on the bench for a week or so, then decided all was well > > and put it in the server rack and started doing the company's email > > service on it. After a few weeks, it suddenly would 'reboot' for no > > apparent reason. No log entries, nothing at all except the usual stuff in > > /var/log/messages about '/ was not unmounted correctly', etc. Just like > > you had pulled the power plug. > > > > The 2nd instance was a server that I maintain for an ISP that was a > > mirror image of their primary server, a 'hot spare' so to speak. The > > primary, running the same software was solid, but the backup would reboot > > at about 5:20 every morning with the same syndrome..no log entries of any > > sort and just the usual entries in /var/log messages saying the the / > > partition was not unmounted properly. The odd thing was that it was > > happening at virtually the same time every morning. > > > > I upgraded both systems to the latest -RELEASE and it made no > > difference. Then, they both just *stopped doing it by themselves* with no > > apparent correlation to anything installed software-wise. Neither server > > has had any problem for over a year now. > > > > The 3rd instance is happening now. Another server I maintain for my > > 'night job' is doing the same thing for a customer. It just 'stops' like > > you pulled the power plug. However, this time I thought to check using > > 'last' and found that I had accidentally left an ssh session open and > > that entry said 'crash'. There are no other log entries I can find > > related to the 'reboot'. > > Do you have ddb enabled? If not, the machine may be panicking and > rebooting automatically. No. Not on any of the 3 boxes. Like I said, the problem has gone away and not returned on the Dell and the ISP's box and the loads on those boxes are always increasing and they've been fine for over a year now. It was just when this same thing started with a customer's server box that I started to wonder if it was some very intermittent problem in the kernel. > Actual "spontaneous reboots" are very rare These are very rare except they seem to happen about once a day for a while and then stop... very strange.. > and usually caused by hardware problems (e.g. faulty power supply, > overheating CPU, bad RAM). Possible, but if so, the hardware fixed itself on the first two boxes I mentioned. > Enable DDB, and see what happens the next > time it crashes. I'll try that on the one that's doing it now. Any suggestions as to how to log this to get the moset info ? I've not played with ddb, but I'll read the docs and get it going. Thanks much to all who responded! > > Kris -- -Jim ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
On Friday 01 October 2004 12:36 pm, Doug Ambrisko wrote: > Jim Durham writes: > | I have had this problem now with at least 3 FreeBSD servers over a period > | of about 2 years. I had put it down to some hardware problem but it seems > | to be too much of a coincidence with 3 different machines doing the same > | thing. > | > | The first time was when I put 4.5-RELEASE on a brand new Dell Poweredge > | 2650. I ran it on the bench for a week or so, then decided all was well > | and put it in the server rack and started doing the company's email > | service on it. After a few weeks, it suddenly would 'reboot' for no > | apparent reason. No log entries, nothing at all except the usual stuff in > | /var/log/messages about '/ was not unmounted correctly', etc. Just like > | you had pulled the power plug. > > How much memory are in these system?. The Dell is a Dual Xeon 2650 with 2gb or Ram. The ISP's box has only 256 megs or ram and the business customer's box has 512. > If you have 3G or more you end > up with very little left for the kernel in the 2G space Can you elaborate on why this is? > . You can > monitor how much space you have left by compile a debug kernel then > as root: > gdb -k kernel.debug /dev/mem > print ((unsigned int)virtual_end)-((unsigned int)kernel_vm_end) > This should probably be made into a sysctl so it can be montored > better. > > If you only have a few meg. left it doesn't take many processes to > fork etc. then you machine blows up. The bge driver for example takes > 4M each for the jumbo packet handling. You can recover some of this > memory via loader.conf tunables or bump KVA_PAGES in your kernel > config file. Still once this memory is put into the zone allocator > (vmstat -z) in -stable it is gone from the system even if that bucket > isn't fully used or needed :-( What would you expect to see in the logs on such a scenario? I'm surprised to see nothing. > > Ironically the more memory you put in a system the less you can do with > the system! > > A lot of people are starting to run into this problem since large memory > machines are cheap. Well, I don't think 2gb is large by your standards? > > Doug A. -- -Jim ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 10:03:00AM -0400, Jim Durham wrote: > I have had this problem now with at least 3 FreeBSD servers over a period of > about 2 years. I had put it down to some hardware problem but it seems to be > too much of a coincidence with 3 different machines doing the same thing. > > The first time was when I put 4.5-RELEASE on a brand new Dell Poweredge 2650. > I ran it on the bench for a week or so, then decided all was well and put it > in the server rack and started doing the company's email service on it. After > a few weeks, it suddenly would 'reboot' for no apparent reason. No log > entries, nothing at all except the usual stuff in /var/log/messages about '/ > was not unmounted correctly', etc. Just like you had pulled the power plug. > > The 2nd instance was a server that I maintain for an ISP that was a mirror > image of their primary server, a 'hot spare' so to speak. The primary, > running the same software was solid, but the backup would reboot at about > 5:20 every morning with the same syndrome..no log entries of any sort and > just the usual entries in /var/log messages saying the the / partition was > not unmounted properly. The odd thing was that it was happening at virtually > the same time every morning. > > I upgraded both systems to the latest -RELEASE and it made no difference. > Then, they both just *stopped doing it by themselves* with no apparent > correlation to anything installed software-wise. Neither server has had any > problem for over a year now. > > The 3rd instance is happening now. Another server I maintain for my 'night > job' is doing the same thing for a customer. It just 'stops' like you pulled > the power plug. However, this time I thought to check using 'last' and found > that I had accidentally left an ssh session open and that entry said 'crash'. > There are no other log entries I can find related to the 'reboot'. Do you have ddb enabled? If not, the machine may be panicking and rebooting automatically. Actual "spontaneous reboots" are very rare and usually caused by hardware problems (e.g. faulty power supply, overheating CPU, bad RAM). Enable DDB, and see what happens the next time it crashes. Kris pgpDPVhmOOdbh.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Sudden Reboots
Could there be some more elaboration on these memory issues. From the way you described it, it sounds like if you have two machines serving the same function with the same load, and one machine has 512Mb and the other has 2.5Gb, the one with more memory might be prone to be more problems. Why is that? How do you tune the kernel to get around this? -John On Oct 1, 2004, at 12:36 PM, Doug Ambrisko wrote: How much memory are in these system?. If you have 3G or more you end up with very little left for the kernel in the 2G space. You can monitor how much space you have left by compile a debug kernel then as root: gdb -k kernel.debug /dev/mem print ((unsigned int)virtual_end)-((unsigned int)kernel_vm_end) This should probably be made into a sysctl so it can be montored better. If you only have a few meg. left it doesn't take many processes to fork etc. then you machine blows up. The bge driver for example takes 4M each for the jumbo packet handling. You can recover some of this memory via loader.conf tunables or bump KVA_PAGES in your kernel config file. Still once this memory is put into the zone allocator (vmstat -z) in -stable it is gone from the system even if that bucket isn't fully used or needed :-( Ironically the more memory you put in a system the less you can do with the system! A lot of people are starting to run into this problem since large memory machines are cheap. Doug A. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sudden Reboots
Jim Durham writes: | I have had this problem now with at least 3 FreeBSD servers over a period of | about 2 years. I had put it down to some hardware problem but it seems to be | too much of a coincidence with 3 different machines doing the same thing. | | The first time was when I put 4.5-RELEASE on a brand new Dell Poweredge 2650. | I ran it on the bench for a week or so, then decided all was well and put it | in the server rack and started doing the company's email service on it. After | a few weeks, it suddenly would 'reboot' for no apparent reason. No log | entries, nothing at all except the usual stuff in /var/log/messages about '/ | was not unmounted correctly', etc. Just like you had pulled the power plug. How much memory are in these system?. If you have 3G or more you end up with very little left for the kernel in the 2G space. You can monitor how much space you have left by compile a debug kernel then as root: gdb -k kernel.debug /dev/mem print ((unsigned int)virtual_end)-((unsigned int)kernel_vm_end) This should probably be made into a sysctl so it can be montored better. If you only have a few meg. left it doesn't take many processes to fork etc. then you machine blows up. The bge driver for example takes 4M each for the jumbo packet handling. You can recover some of this memory via loader.conf tunables or bump KVA_PAGES in your kernel config file. Still once this memory is put into the zone allocator (vmstat -z) in -stable it is gone from the system even if that bucket isn't fully used or needed :-( Ironically the more memory you put in a system the less you can do with the system! A lot of people are starting to run into this problem since large memory machines are cheap. Doug A. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Sigmatel USB IrDA dongle
In the last episode (Sep 30), ALeine said: > I'd like to use the SigmaTel USB IrDA dongle to connect my computer > (FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE) and my mobile phone (Samsung X600). According > to my log, the dongle is recognized: > > /kernel: ugen0: Sigmatel Inc IrDA/USB Bridge, rev 1.10/0.08, addr 2 > > So what do I do now? I've searched everywhere and there seems to be > no software I can use with the dongle (birda, lirc, gnokii all > support only serial IrDA dongles at best). Is anyone working on > something to make use of USB IrDA dongles on FreeBSD? You may have to wait for someone to port the irframe and ustir devices from NetBSD: http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?ustir http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?irframe > Any info will be greatly appreciated, I'm interested in making > this work even if I have to spend a few months coding everything > myself. If you're a programmer, you might want to see if porting them yourself is an option. I think a lot of our USB support comes from NetBSD already. -- Dan Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Sigmatel USB IrDA dongle
Hi, I'd like to use the SigmaTel USB IrDA dongle to connect my computer (FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE) and my mobile phone (Samsung X600). According to my log, the dongle is recognized: /kernel: ugen0: Sigmatel Inc IrDA/USB Bridge, rev 1.10/0.08, addr 2 So what do I do now? I've searched everywhere and there seems to be no software I can use with the dongle (birda, lirc, gnokii all support only serial IrDA dongles at best). Is anyone working on something to make use of USB IrDA dongles on FreeBSD? If not, does anyone have some sort of alternative solution? Some Linux mini distribution with irda-tools running inside bochs or VMware? I installed VMware 3.2 from the ports because it is supposed to now support mapping of USB devices, but since it is a native Linux application it would need a true, mapped usbdevfs under /compat/linux/proc/bus/usb to actually work. Is anyone working on this? I know that almost exactly two years ago Bruce M Simpson posted on freebsd-hackers about this issue, but I have no info on what has been done. Any info will be greatly appreciated, I'm interested in making this work even if I have to spend a few months coding everything myself. Thanks & best regards, ALeine ___ WebMail FREE http://mail.austrosearch.net ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Sudden Reboots
I have had this problem now with at least 3 FreeBSD servers over a period of about 2 years. I had put it down to some hardware problem but it seems to be too much of a coincidence with 3 different machines doing the same thing. The first time was when I put 4.5-RELEASE on a brand new Dell Poweredge 2650. I ran it on the bench for a week or so, then decided all was well and put it in the server rack and started doing the company's email service on it. After a few weeks, it suddenly would 'reboot' for no apparent reason. No log entries, nothing at all except the usual stuff in /var/log/messages about '/ was not unmounted correctly', etc. Just like you had pulled the power plug. The 2nd instance was a server that I maintain for an ISP that was a mirror image of their primary server, a 'hot spare' so to speak. The primary, running the same software was solid, but the backup would reboot at about 5:20 every morning with the same syndrome..no log entries of any sort and just the usual entries in /var/log messages saying the the / partition was not unmounted properly. The odd thing was that it was happening at virtually the same time every morning. I upgraded both systems to the latest -RELEASE and it made no difference. Then, they both just *stopped doing it by themselves* with no apparent correlation to anything installed software-wise. Neither server has had any problem for over a year now. The 3rd instance is happening now. Another server I maintain for my 'night job' is doing the same thing for a customer. It just 'stops' like you pulled the power plug. However, this time I thought to check using 'last' and found that I had accidentally left an ssh session open and that entry said 'crash'. There are no other log entries I can find related to the 'reboot'. I 'googled' this problem and found it mentioned at least dozens of times without any answer brought forth. I'm beginning to think this is real, but so intermittent that I don't know how to begin to debug or find it. A wild guess would be something like an unitialized pointer, where everything works until whereever it is pointing to assumes some value that makes it just die suddenly without even a panic message. The reason that I suspect this is also that the server that is doing this currently was running fine for a year, then the floods we had recently caused it to be powered down for a day or so and usually it is on a UPS and never is powered down, so that would have maybe changed the 'garbage' in memory, whereas normally it would stay the same until it was powered down. IE; if an uninitialized pointer was the culprit, maybe what it is pointing to, or where it is pointing is critical and powering it down changes where it is pointing and that area gets overwritten by some system process and causes the reboot. I'm posting this to 'hackers' because I thought it might be a kernel thing. -- -Jim ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: GEOM (ggate) compression consumer +problem
João Carlos Mendes Luís wrote: Instead of block compression, wouldn't it be better (and maybe easier) to use file compresion, in a VFS layer (and a threaded daemon)? Better, yes. Easier very much not, since I know something about GEOM (actually, ggate), and nothing about VFS and kernel internals. Also, as others mentioned, even files would need to be compressed in blocks, to allow for random seeking... This is what I would like to see in a compressed file system. I agree :) But, I still can't solve the wdrain problem. I've tried it on a recent BETA6 kernel and it still remains. Writes get slower and slower (actually, the frequency of writes), and then something locks up (with no CPU usage...). Sometimes, *any* writes to any filesystem lock up. Should I take it to geom@ list? It doesn't seem to be developer-oriented. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
