*BSD News Article 68564


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From: Rob Landry <umar@wcrb.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Help me, Mister Wizard!
Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 05:42:47 -0700
Organization: Wilder Internet Gateway, Boston, MA
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.93.960515044938.164A-100000@natrix.wcrb.com>
Reply-To: Rob Landry <umar@wcrb.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: natrix.wcrb.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
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I'm running NetBSD 1.1/i386 on a Compudyne 386-33 with 4 MB RAM and a 1.2
GB hard drive.  Every few days the system freezes up.

When that happens, it won't respond to anything typed on the keyboard. 
The machine can be pinged, however, and I can telnet to it and get
"Connected to zzzzz.wcrb.com", but no login prompt.  The machine runs
sendmail, named and httpd, none of which respond while it is in its
"comatose" state.  The only way I've been able to bring it back to life
is to power it down and cold-boot it.

When it first happened, I thought the problem might have been caused by a
power surge, so I put the machine on a UPS.

When the machine next froze up, I decided it must be a hardware problem.
So I took out the hard drive and network adapter and installed them in a
completely different computer.

And the problem happened again.  If it's not a hardware problem, and it's
not Boston Edison's fault, then there must be something wrong with NetBSD
or the way I've installed it.

NetBSD 1.1 is the only OS installed on this machine, which is used as a
DNS server, mail server and HTTP server for our local area network.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I might track this problem down? 


Rob Landry
WCRB 102.5 FM Classical Radio Boston
umar@wcrb.com (work)
umar@cybercom.net (home)