*BSD News Article 12530


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!uunet!email!vlsivie!volker
From: volker@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at (Volker Hamann)
Subject: Re: Constant rebooting of hard drive (PLEASE HELP)
Message-ID: <1993Mar8.143516.12369@email.tuwien.ac.at>
Sender: news@email.tuwien.ac.at
Nntp-Posting-Host: elba.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at
Reply-To: volker@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at (Volker Hamann)
Organization: Technical University of Vienna
References: <C38sIK.nw@acsu.buffalo.edu> <6497@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1993 14:35:16 GMT
Lines: 43

In <6497@krafla.rhi.hi.is> adamd@rhi.hi.is (Adam David) writes:

>tef@acsu.buffalo.edu (T. E. Frisinger) writes:

>>when I rebooted, the machine would start  initializing and then
>>flash an error message and reboot.  After letting it reboot about 30 times
>>so I could read the error message, I got most of it.  It says something like,
>>  Operating system is saving copy of RAM at offset 0 (something about 1MB)
>>device bad, rebooting.

>I get the same messages when my system decides to do a spontaneous reboot.
>Last time this happened was during 'ls' on an otherwise "idle" machine.
>It took over 20 reboots (probably closer to 40, it took one and a half hours)
>before the system recovered enough to be useable again. It takes anything
>from 1 to 5 reboots each time before allowing a faultless login, and then
>reboots spontaneously or hangs again shortly afterwards. Normally, it is
>possible to shutdown the system and start it up again immediately afterwards
>without having to reboot a second time. Maybe the problem is aggravated
>because I have to press the reset button every time (while the system is going
>through the BIOS checks) in order for the SMC 8003 ethernet card to be
>recognised.

>It have also noticed if the message appears "updating disks before reboot"
>that most times it just hangs without rebooting. Often the system panics
>with trap 12 (which one is that?).

>--
>Adam David (adam@veda.is)

I have the same problem everytime I rebuild a kernel and reboot the system.
Since I don't have the patience to wait for several reboots, I always turn
off the PC, wait for about 1 minute and turn it on again and it comes up
without problems. This has always worked for me.

I think the failure is in the harddisk initialization (I have a IDE disk)
which only is done correctly (and fully) when you switch on the system.

	Volker
--
|   /| ! Volker Hamann              ! Email: volker@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at
|  / | ! Department for VLSI Design ! Phone: (++43 1) 58801-8142
|-/--| ! University of Technology   ! Fax:   (++43 1) 569697
|/   | ! Vienna, Austria              "IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?"