Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!news.ro.com!sh1.ro.com!mprevost
From: mprevost@ro.com (Mike R. Prevost)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Am I having Mother Board problems? (long)
Date: 10 Nov 1995 21:29:08 GMT
Organization: Renaissance Internet Services
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <480g74$s8o@central.ro.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sh1.ro.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Hi. I've been running Linux for a long time and (for several reasons) I am
trying to bring up a FreeBSD server (to run a pretty good sized news
server on). I think I may be having weird motherboard problems and would
like to get a second opinion before hassling the vendor.
486dx4/100 (AMD I think) ISA/PCI
3Com 3c509
Adaptec 2940 (PCI, not wide)
1x1GB Conner SCSI disk (for / swap and news history and temp space)
4x2GB Seagate Baracuuda SCSI disks
32 MB RAM
I have installed several versions of FreeBSD (2.0.5-RELEASE,
2.1-11??95-SNAP, 2.1.0-STABLE, etc) and recompiled the kernel to support
just the devices I have but it ALWAYS hangs during boot. It hangs right
after is says 'probing for devices on ISA bus' (or whatever). However,
it ALWAYS will do fine if I either 1) type '-v' and the boot: prompt, or
2) type '-c' at the boot: prompt and immediatley type 'quit' at the
config prompt.
But wait.... There's more....
When I first install FreeBSD (2.0.5) I had problems with processes dying
from signal 11 errors. I also had files that would somehow get typos in
them without my intervention. Like compiling the kernel -- they had typos
all in them. Somtimes I would download a tar.gz file and it would test
out fime (with -tzvf), but then after doing something else I go back and
the file is corrupted. I read the FAQ (like a good boy) and saw that bad
memory causes the signal 11 problems and figured that it would also cause
my other problems. I had the vendor bring a hardware SIMM tester and sure
enought the 32 MB SIMM tested bad. He put 2x16MB simms (no-parity -- only
ones he had on him) in there (tested ones).
Still more...
So I got brave and installed a 2.1.0 snapshot (11??95). It was working
ok, but processes started dying from (of all things) SIG_BUS errors. I
have very frequent kernel "panics" becauseof kernel page faults. I even
saw an "privileged instruction" fault. (these were from trap() evidently).
I'm at a loss of what to do next. If you have any ideas at all, please
mail me or post here.
Thanks.
--- Mike R. Prevost
mprevost@ro.com