Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 11:18:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Michael Allman <msa@dinosaur.umbc.edu> To: Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us> Cc: BSD <bsd@shell-server.com>, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Constant panics on 4.1-STABLE! Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0009211110090.16759-100000@dinosaur.umbc.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0009210906190.27801-100000@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us>
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On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Chris Dillon wrote: > On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, BSD wrote: > > > Are you saying all 3 sticks are bad at 133MHz (KA7) and one > > or more is bad at 66MHz (BP6)? The likelihood of that is > > extremely small. > > You said you were running a PIII on that BP6. Therefore, you would > have to be running it at either 100MHz or 133MHz (which the BX doesn't > officially support, but it works pretty well anyway). > > Also, it might not be that the memory is bad, but just out of spec for > your systems. For example, if your system is expecting RAM that it > can use CAS2 timings with but you have CAS3 RAM, that is going to > cause problems. If this is the case, the EEPROMs on the sticks might > be programmed with incorrect timing information. Tell your systems to > ignore the EEPROM (SPD), and try manually setting the most > conservative memory timings you can in each of your systems. I am having problems with random panics/reboots as well. I am using two sticks of Corsair 128MB ECC memory. My motherboard uses the GX chipset. Crashes occur when I am using both sticks and one or the other stick. Considering that I have been using this memory reliably for about a year I find it hard to believe that both sticks would go bad simultaneously. I have been using CAS3, ECC settings in my bios. > > Also, a 512MB stick of RAM would cost me $1,600CAD. Sigh. > > That's not going to happen anytime soon. Furthermore, I stress > > tested each stick of RAM, with make -j64 buildworld. Nothing > > failed there. The panics happenned when the system was just doing > > its normal tasks. I'll try to post more detailed reports > > (including crash dumps). > > A 'make world' is a pretty good way to stress-test things, but its far > from perfect. I've had flaky systems survive multiple 'make world' > sessions but still fail unexpectedly at other times. My experience so far has been that the panics occur independently of system load. Also, I often do not get a crash dump, even though I have my system configured for that. > BTW, crash dumps will be meaningless if this really is a hardware > problem. Equivalent to this statement is the following. If the crash dumps are not meaningless (meaningful?), then this is not a hardware problem. I would say it is still worthwhile to look at crash dumps. > These kinds of problems are exactly why I spend the few extra bucks to > buy ECC RAM for my important systems, even my workstation at home. > Its worth it. If I have problems and I have ECC enabled, I can be > fairly sure it isn't the RAM. Usually I just enable EC > (Error-checking only) on my system at home, so if I start getting a > lot of NMI panics I know that my memory is starting to flake out on > me, at which point I can turn on ECC and start shopping for new > memory. So far, I've never gotten one. This is probably due to me > running PC133 memory on only a 66MHz bus. :-) I have ECC RAM with ECC enabled. I get crashes anyway. Would you say then that it's not the RAM? Michael To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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