Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:41:56 -0400 (EDT) From: cmascott@world.std.com To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: kern/7141: Kernel freezes, gdb, high memory load Message-ID: <199807012241.SAA00313@europa.my.pc>
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>Number: 7141
>Category: kern
>Synopsis: Kernel freezes, gdb, high memory load
>Confidential: no
>Severity: serious
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: freebsd-bugs
>State: open
>Quarter:
>Keywords:
>Date-Required:
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: current-users
>Arrival-Date: Wed Jul 1 15:50:01 PDT 1998
>Last-Modified:
>Originator: Carl Mascott
>Organization:
>Release: FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE i386
>Environment:
FreeBSD europa.my.pc 2.2.6-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE #0: Fri Jun 19 22:08:12 EDT 1998
cem@europa.my.pc:/usr/src/sys/compile/EUR980619 i386
(GENERIC kernel with unused drivers deleted, Voxware sound
blaster driver added)
P90, 32 MB RAM, 96 MB swap, Adaptec 2940, 2 SCSI drives
SW running at time of freeze:
3 xterm's
olvwm
gdb
program being debugged (calctool)
root csh on console
>Description:
I built a debugging version of libxview.a. The library
has ~20 MB of symbol information. I linked a small
program (calctool) with the library and started to debug
the program with gdb. I set a breakpoint and started
the program. The program ran to the breakpoint. I
then continued the program and the kernel froze.
During the following few minutes there was no disk
activity and the keyboard and mouse buttons were
dead. I couldn't switch VT's. I couldn't reboot
with CTL-ALT-DEL. The only clue that the kernel
had not crashed was that the mouse cursor was still
following the mouse. I finally had to shut the
power off (no reset switch).
After rebooting I checked /var/log/messages to see
if the kernel wrote something about the problem,
but it didn't.
This could well be the first time I did anything that
required more memory than the machine's physical RAM.
I have seen temporary freezes before when searching
a large (~500K) document in Netscape Communicator 4.04,
but during those freezes the mouse cursor wasn't
following the mouse. Those freezes lasted 10-20
seconds.
>How-To-Repeat:
Unsure. Seems to be a VM problem. Try creating a
memory load that exceeds physical RAM. If it is a
VM problem, the less RAM the machine had, the more
likely it would be for the problem to occur.
>Fix:
Unknown.
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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