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#! rnews 3736 sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.bugs:3071 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:1274 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!wraith.internode.com.au!tipellium.apanix.apana.org.au!cleese.apana.org.au!cleese.apana.org.au!not-for-mail From: newton@cleese.apana.org.au (Mark Newton) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Network hangs on diskless FreeBSD system Date: 16 May 1995 15:39:00 +0930 Organization: cleese.apana.org.au public access UNIX +61-8-3736006 Lines: 86 Distribution: world Message-ID: <3p9fhs$25o@cleese.apana.org.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: cleese.apana.org.au I have a 386DX/40 FreeBSD 2.0 system running as a router. The machine is diskless, and uses my main server host (running the same version of FreeBSD) as a boot server. The diskless box is called "dotat", the server is called "cleese". dotat is very small (read: cheap). It has a slow CPU, no disks, no monitor, no keyboard, and only 5Mb of RAM. Essentially, it's a small, unobtrusive box which sits up on one end of my modem rack without bothering anyone :-) I quite frequently find that dotat stops serving incoming TCP connections. If I attempt to telnet to it, I get messages such as: newton@cleese> telnet dotat Trying 203.14.159.1... Connected to dotat.apana.org.au. Escape character is '^]'. _ ... and no further activity. dotat obviously hasn't completely hung -- it still functions perfectly well as a router, I can ping it, and (as far as I know), it's still running processes (I can't login to it though, so I can't verify that :-/) Suspicion: NFS is becoming spagged. Since system is swapping over NFS, syslog is unable to page-in to tell me about it. So, the system just silently falls over. inetd probably doesn't need to page to accept a connection, so dotat continues to accept them, but any servers forked off by inetd require paging I/O so nothing ever happens after the acceptance of the connection. Routing is unaffected because that's all happening in the kernel, which never pages anyway. Has this problem been seen before? Does the latest SNAP fix it? FYI: dotat's dmesg: newton@dotat> dmesg FreeBSD 2.1.0-Development #0: Sat May 6 20:13:37 CST 1995 root@cleese.apana.org.au:/usr/src/sys/compile/DOTAT CPU: i386DX (386-class CPU) real memory = 4849664 (1184 pages) avail memory = 3940352 (962 pages) Probing for devices on the ISA bus: scprobe: keyboard RESET failed fe sc0 at 0x60-0x6f irq 1 on motherboard sc0: MDA/hercules <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x0> ed0 at 0x300-0x31f irq 10 on isa ed0: address 00:00:21:40:97:73, type NE2000 (16 bit) sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa sio0: type 16550A sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa sio1: type 16550A sio2 not found at 0x1b0 sio3 not found at 0x1b8 pca0 PC speaker audio driver npx0 on motherboard npx0: 387 emulator NFS SWAP: 203.0.12.134:/local4/export/swap/dotat using 20000 kbyte. NFS ROOT: 203.0.12.134:/local4/export/root/dotat Config file from /tftpboot on cleese, plus other info: root@cleese> cat /tftpboot/cfg.203.0.12.135 hostname dotat.apana.org.au rootfs 203.0.12.134:/local4/export/root/dotat swapfs 203.0.12.134:/local4/export/swap/dotat swapsize 20000 root@cleese> ls -l /local4/export/swap/dotat total 40050 drwxrwxr-x 2 root wheel 512 Apr 30 18:24 ./ drwxrwxr-x 3 root wheel 512 Apr 30 18:38 ../ -rw-r--r-T 1 root wheel 20480000 May 16 15:35 swap.203.0.12.135 root@cleese> - mark -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- I tried an internal modem, newton@cleese.apana.org.au but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton ----- Voice: +61-8-3732429 --------------- Data: +61-8-3736006 -----