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From: gene@stark.uucp (Gene Stark)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: bad crashes w/ 386bsd
Date: 22 Feb 93 08:54:15
Organization: Gene Stark's home system
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <GENE.93Feb22085415@stark.stark.uucp>
References: <8fVlfba00WBME6YGZo@andrew.cmu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: stark.uucp
In-reply-to: aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu's message of 20 Feb 93 20:02:15 GMT
>I have been experiencing crashes of the first type since I installed
>386bsd, but the second has just cropped up since I installed PatchKit
>0.2. I am also using syscons (I couldn't get pcvt to work, just hard
>locked the machine on bootup). Normally I can live with a crash after
>two days of uptime (just get into the habit of rebooting daily), but
>recently things have started crashing a few times a day (about 50% of
>each type). Today the file system crashed so hard that I lost my
>bootblock (and had to spend a few hours learning how to reinstall them
>w/ disklabel).
>Here is my 386bsd configuration
> Standard install +
> Kernel patched to PK0.2 (using all patches that would install without
> source for the rest of 386bsd, and without the patches for things that
> didn't affect my system).
> Syscons for virtual consoles
> Little hack on the 3c503 driver to use AUI port instead of BNC
> 5 meg swap
Make *VERY* sure that you have the proper "select" patches applied to *ALL*
relevant drivers. This includes "syscons". Here's why: Patchkit 0.2.1
patch 00061 ("Obscure Telnet Bug" I forget whether this is the same number
as in 0.2) makes a major change to the way in which "select" is handled in
the kernel. Basically, it now wakes up processes by using their pid to find
them, whereas before it went directly via a pointer to the process structure.
If you have NOT installed patch00061, you better NOT be using
patched versions of drivers like syscons, CGD's com driver,
bus mouse drivers, etc. If you do, your kernel is going
to be treating process ID's like pointers to processes,
and writing crud in random spots in memory. This will
cause very bad crashes.
If you HAVE installed patch00061, you MUST use the patched drivers,
otherwise you will experience things like console hangs
and other weird behavior. (I think this direction will not
cause bad crashes, but your system won't work right.)
- Gene Stark
--
stark@cs.sunysb.edu