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Date:      Sat, 2 Nov 2002 22:12:09 -0800 (PST)
From:      Jeff Jirsa <jeff@unixconsults.com>
To:        Jason Godfrey <godfrey@sol.aptsolutions.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Disk activity leading to hangs
Message-ID:  <20021102220616.S7015-100000@boris.st.hmc.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20021102235447.D35685@sol.aptsolutions.com>

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On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, Jason Godfrey wrote:

>
> Basically under heavy disk load (buildworld, large package install, nightly
> script run) the system will hang hard. The two systems have very little in
> common, one is a P2 400 running FreeBSD-Stable from Oct 2, the other (a new
> machine) is a AMD 1600+ running FreeBSD 4.5-Release. The faster machine seems
> to hit the hange much more regularly.
>
> The only thing in common between the two machines I can think of is that they
> both have Maxtor IDE drives on a Ultra-ATA channel. (On the P2 400 I've been
> running in PIO mode, as that _seems_ to reduce the frequency of the hangs.
> On the AMD it seems to make no difference.)
>

I've seen it too, with a 4.5 system with a maxtor drive. Unfortunately,
I've never been able to track it down to anything certain: I was (and
still am) leaning towards poor hardware over an OS fault. The only thing
leading me to believe it's NOT a hardware issue is that the kernel seems
to be running, although nothing responds: network activity lights flash on
the NIC and switch, but NOTHING else works (have to powercycle).

I remember someone else pointing out the same problem about a year ago,
and nobody ever offered any explanation of the problem or even hinted at a
solution.

The last thread is here (watch the line wrap):
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=6504+0+archive/2002/freebsd-hackers/20020512.freebsd-hackers


- Jeff


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