> On NetBSD 8, 9, current, [...] Stop darkstat. Machine locks. > [...] in case anyone can imagine how and why a complete system lockup > could happen as the result of an interface being used in promiscuous > mode for long periods of time (and not when used that way for short > periods of time.
Don't forget, it may _not_ be "as the result of an interface being used in promiscuous mode for long periods of time". That's merely a correlate (and possibly not a perfect correlate - your sample size is small); the causality may be more complicated. (For example, maybe it's actually as a result of receiving certain traffic which is on that segment but which it wouldn't normally receive. Maybe it's got nothing to do with network interfaces and instead is related to something else darkstat does - I know nothing about what darkstat does or doesn't do, except for your implication that it runs interfaces promiscuous.) It also might be relevant to note which port you're running. It must be capable of having re and wm interfaces, since you name them, but that still includes a fair bit. If you want to test just interfaces being promiscuous (and inevitable side effects thereof, such as receiving traffic it normally might not), then set up a bridge(4) instance and add the relevant interface to it. That will (at least in my experience) run the interface promiscuous, but shouldn't do much else. Or start tcpdump with an unlikely expression, such as "ether host 00:11:22:33:44:55", and no -p. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML [email protected] / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
