*BSD News Article 87471


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From: dolphin@zool.unizh.ch (Michael Neuweiler)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: HD mess after netbsd 1.2 crash
Date: 25 Jan 1997 10:34:50 GMT
Organization: University of Zurich, Switzerland
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Kevin P. Neal (kpneal@pobox.com) wrote in <5c40qo$i5l@camel5.mindspring.com> :

> >1) While installing the files, I get unpredictable kernel panics.
> >   Even flushing the filesystems like a mad (very often) in another shell can't prevent
> >   it. This makes it nearly impossible for me to install netbsd at all (see 2)

> Uh, are you fsck'ing the partitions after a crash?

Well, I can't do anything else when I get a kernel panic. Usually the debugger pops up and 
I must admit I don't know what I could do there. The only thing I did once was "cont"
to go ahead. The problem became only worse.. (But this was only during one of many 
installations.). 
So, all I could do was the three finger salute (reset) and hope. But during reboot the
automatic invocation of fsck failed and I was asked to run it manually. And since
hundreds of questions were usually posed I simply called "fsck -y".
This is done BEFORE the system comes up completely !

> >2) When netbsd crashes (i.g. kernel panic or simply freezes) I do have to reset the computer
> >   But doing this results in a MASSIVE LOSS of files/dirs on my mounted netbsd partitions
> >   which usually makes the system unusable => have to install everything again..
> >   but this takes at least 5-10 attempts.

> This could be because the filesystems might need to be fsck'ed.

No no, the filesystems are o.k. before the crash happens. The only thing I could imagine
that leads to a crash is the heavy usage of either the fs or the cpu.
Again: I'm installing netbsd from scratch, on just formated partitions. And usually
when I get to the second or thrid packages (comp12.?? or whatever) I get a kernel panic
while the archive is unpacked and the files copied onto the harddisk.

> I can't name a Unix kernel that won't panic if it sees a corrupted
> filesystem. When you crash, always make sure you fsck your filesystems
> before mounting them read-write. My habit is to fsck a filesystem

The filesystem was not corrupted when the crash occured (at least it should not have
been :)   The crash corrupts the filesystems.. 

BTW: I reinstalled netbsd1.1 now and everything works perfect. No problems at all.
There really has to be a problem with 1.2 ... maybe in the part of the software
that conrtols the ide insterface - since my hd's are IDE.
I'll do another test now by installing a very old 42MB scsi hd and installing netbsd 1.2
on it. Let's see if it works.

Thanks,
 Michael