From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 19 15:30:59 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EFF116A403 for ; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:30:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from stephen@math.missouri.edu) Received: from sccmmhc92.asp.att.net (sccmmhc92.asp.att.net [204.127.203.212]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4FDB443CA2 for ; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:30:57 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from stephen@math.missouri.edu) Received: from [10.0.0.4] (12-216-254-44.client.mchsi.com[12.216.254.44]) by sccmmhc92.asp.att.net (sccmmhc92) with ESMTP id <20061219151330m9200km63qe>; Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:13:30 +0000 Message-ID: <45880199.7050503@math.missouri.edu> Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:13:29 -0600 From: Stephen Montgomery-Smith User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20061218 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <455D5F38.4060208@joeholden.co.uk> <232F7011-5BCC-4616-82CC-973D1CB41593@lassitu.de> <455D66D6.8080708@joeholden.co.uk> <20061117114754.dafdbc1a.dom@helenmarks.co.uk> <455DBAAD.6080403@joeholden.co.uk> <0BE259F4-95BC-4A44-983F-5F65921EFD14@lassitu.de> <455DBF71.8060203@joeholden.co.uk> <455FCB7C.8000600@joeholden.co.uk> <4587EDBF.3020804@joeholden.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <4587EDBF.3020804@joeholden.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: (Seemingly) Spontaneous rebooting X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:30:59 -0000 Joe Holden wrote: > Ma wrote: > >> I have almost the same reboots on my server. :( And it may reboot >> serval times a day. I'd like to know how to get crash dumps? What is >> added in your rc.conf? >> >> -- >> Ma Jie >> > Hi, I used the rc.conf values as set out in rc,conf(5) > > root@claire# grep crash /etc/defaults/rc.conf > dumpdev="NO" # Device to crashdump to (device name, AUTO, or > NO). > dumpdir="/var/crash" # Directory where crash dumps are to be stored > > I set dumpdev to my swap partition, although nothing got dumped, > although I did upgrade it to -CURRENT as i'd exhausted everything else, > and its not crashed since, not wishing to flame/troll/whatever, but 6.x > seems to have a fair few issues. I posted a dump of a crash I had with a recent RELENG_6 computer a few weeks ago. It was one of those fairly useless dumps where the program counter seems to be completely meaningless. I also had similar behavior about a year ago, which seemed to be produced by a bug that is now fixed. (That one I could make it happen at will by running a multithreaded program on a 4 processor system, and "top -s0" at the same time.) I do recall the nature of the crash is that sometimes it produced dumps, and sometimes it didn't. And when it did they were useless. The crash seemed always to be with a page fault. I experienced it on two computers, both with SMP. Anyway, what I am saying is that all these people might be seeing a genuine problem that by its very nature does not produce meaningful dumps. If this problem is real, perhaps one solution is to put out release 6.2 fairly soon, then lots of people will try it and experience this problem. Then you guys will have lots of evidence to work with. Then when you fix it, put out release 6.3 much sooner than otherwise anticipated. (I should add that my wife accuses me of having humor that is too dry.) Stephen