Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 03:36:06 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Francisco Reyes" <lists@natserv.com>, "FreeBSD Questions List" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: How to troubleshoot freeze? Message-ID: <003401c10c50$c9953380$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010714005404.O9206-100000@zoraida.natserv.net>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Francisco Reyes >Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 11:08 PM >To: FreeBSD Questions List >Subject: How to troubleshoot freeze? > > >The day I have been fearing has arrived.. I have limited the number of >FreeBSD machines at work because I always feared this would happen. > I hope you don't take this wrong but if this is true then you haven't been running networks very long. Windows and other operating systems freeze even more commonnly than FreeBSD does - if your going to limit the OS choices you use based on their propensity for freezing then you should be limiting Windows ones even more. > >How does one troubleshoot a freezing machine? >Tomorrow I plan to run a hardware check program, tufftest, to see if it >finds anything wrong. Other than that I can't think of anything else to >try. > troubleshooting freezing is done like any other troubleshooting - you start by gathering information, then you make a hypothesis of what the cause is based on the information, then test and see if your correct. Repeat for as long as it takes to either fix the system or decide to abandon it. Running a hardware check program is good but most of the check programs aren't as hard on the systems as the OS is in my opinion, so don't be disappointed if the check program turns up nothing. Even better is to determine what, if anything, has changed on the system or the environment the system is in, at the same time that your problems started. Did you change clients on the net? Did you add or remove a hub on the net? Did you change software on the machine? Did a power spike come through and zap half of the equipment? Did your local power company start rolling brownouts this week? Did you notice a funny smell like something burning that started around that time? Did your air conditioning die? Another piece of information that needs to be obtained is to find out if the freezing is hardware or software related. The best way to do this is to obtain another PC and swap hard disks with the system in question. If the FreeBSD server doesen't freeze any more when it's running on a different hardware platform, then you know the problem is bad hardware. If it keeps freezing, then it's most likely a software problem. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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