*BSD News Article 63606


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From: gilham@lily.csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.1.0 System Crashes often, please help.
Date: 09 Mar 1996 10:58:27 -0800
Organization: Computer Science Lab, SRI International
Lines: 48
Sender: gilham@lily.csl.sri.com
Message-ID: <u768ce6qlo.fsf@lily.csl.sri.com>
References: <4hbai5$3gd@dot.cstone.net> <4hg6u6$hd9@crocus.gamma.ru>
NNTP-Posting-Host: lily.csl.sri.com
In-reply-to: ivt@gamma.ru's message of 5 Mar 1996 04:55:18 +0300
X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1

In article <4hg6u6$hd9@crocus.gamma.ru> ivt@gamma.ru (Igor Timkin) writes:

   ivt@gamma.ru (Igor Timkin) wrote:
--------------------------------------------

   I have the same problem on news server.

   Configuration:
   FreeBSD-2.1.0R
   486DX4-100, 64 Mb RAM
   AHA-2940UW, 4 Gb ST15230N, 4Gb ST15150W, 5Gb Wangtek 9500DC Tape

   Periodically (2-5 days) server is rebooted spontaneously (basically during
   back up). If I do
   dump 0f /dev/null /dev/sd0a &
   dump 0f /dev/null /dev/sd1a &
   the system crash during 5-7 minutes.

   This is a big problem for me.

   Igor

----------------------------------------

I had this problem.  It drove me crazy---I could do exactly the same
thing with dumps as Igor can.  We run amanda backups and we'd find our
fileservers crashing every time they were touched by amanda.  I have
four of them and have put a lot of user data on them.

I was starting to get in hot water with my superiors over this
situation, so I finally decided to give solaris a try.  To my
surprise, I couldn't get solaris to boot up all the way.  This gave me
pause, because it indicated that perhaps the problem wasn't
FreeBSD-related after all.

I eventually decided to change the motherboards.  I was running
no-name OPTi-chipset motherboards and changed to Intel endeavor
motherboards.  Now everything runs fine.  I can do the exact same dump
test and the system will complete both dumps.  I can even do three or
more partitions simultaneously.  (I haven't tried to boot solaris
again---I was very relieved that I wouldn't have to run it after all!)

Even more, I find that the scsi transfer rate is faster.  If you have
the chance, you might want to give this a try.

-Fred Gilham   gilham@csl.sri.com
-- 
Fred Gilham                     gilham@csl.sri.com