From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 15 10:08:14 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F2D2616A41F for ; Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:08:13 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from spamrefuse@yahoo.com) Received: from web36214.mail.mud.yahoo.com (web36214.mail.mud.yahoo.com [209.191.68.240]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9C22443D46 for ; Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:08:13 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from spamrefuse@yahoo.com) Received: (qmail 74197 invoked by uid 60001); 15 Nov 2005 10:08:13 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=YvLHMCzLmWIyFVmYb2VItT+F932vFWEorOC/3UTxHCz3Ov1jhGQ1Dn7CATbe5aib5w1t+5XWHjMpapMiLM1PJZR0gctRaxaApRgo0j2xECcnB75g/SEKLl/w98NKQAoSbFkgzTobugJ2nAH9UMDg53fmeqzCJlmd9b2vE65GX1A= ; Message-ID: <20051115100813.74195.qmail@web36214.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Received: from [147.46.44.181] by web36214.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:08:12 PST Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:08:12 -0800 (PST) From: Rob To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <20051115065740.GH39882@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: Swapfile problem in 6? 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, 15 Nov 2005 10:08:14 -0000 --- Peter Jeremy wrote: > > Since your /home is almost empty, how about > (temporarily) moving the contents into /usr and > swapping onto ad0s1e rather than into a > swapfile. This should at least enable you to > build a debug kernel. I'm now indeed building a new kernel, without using a swapfile. I have following in the kernel config: makeoptions DEBUG=-g options INVARIANTS options WITNESS options WITNESS_KDB options KDB options DDB options DDB_NUMSYM options GDB Is that enough? > >First I used 128 MB swapfile on root partition; > >then tried again with a 128 MB swapfile on /var. > >However, exactly the same deadlock occurs: > > Have you pre-allocated the swapfile or is it being > allocated as necessary? > If the latter, try "dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile > bs=1m count=128" Yes, I always 'zero' the swapfile this way, before adding. Because I have used this swapfile construct extensively with previous 5-Stable on the same PC, I assume that harddisk and hardware are OK. Therefore my conclusion is, that there's some problem related to swapfile with 6. I will try to debug as much as I can, to find out why the machine becomes dead at a particular point while using a swapfile (fortunately this is very reproducible). I have never debugged a kernel, so I may ask soon for some assistance. Already now I wonder: 1) Can I debug a kernel that does not crash, but just hangs in a deadlock? Everything seems to be frozen, except pinging the PC.... 2) Is such debugging possible on a headless PC without a keyboard attached? I do have serial console access. Thanks, Rob. __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com