Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!howland.erols.net!news-e2a.gnn.com!portc01.blue.aol.com!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!news.acsu.buffalo.edu!acsu.buffalo.edu!pleung From: pleung@cs.buffalo.edu (Patrick Leung) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD hangs Date: 5 Oct 1996 20:02:07 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 97 Message-ID: <536erv$8kl@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> References: <FRODEF.96Oct1160443@dslab5.cs.uit.no> <32560E04.3163@www.play-hookey.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: yeager.cs.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: pleung X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Ken Bigelow (kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com) wrote: : Frode Vatvedt Fjeld wrote: : > I compiled my own kernel, and all devices appear to work well. It's an : > all SCSI-system (NCR 53C810 on motherboard, no IDE-drivers compiled : > in), otherwise it's a very standard PC configuration. I have 48M of : > swap, and I'm pretty sure it's not exhausted. The freeze has happened : > both under heavy load and no load at all. That's by far one of the strangest errors I've ever heard of. Where did you obtain your copy of FreeBSD? Did yo grab it off an ftp site or got the CD? : Jump-at-conclusions guess, based on similar irregular behavior in a : totally different situation: Check for a possible flaky RAM somewhere. : Sometimes RAM can check out perfectly good, but then fail either : thermally or when one specific pattern is stored there. Good suggestion. Bad ram is definitely a good possibility. If you're using NON-parity ram, then you defenitely want to check your ram, by running software. [I used Himem from windoze] : We had a hell of a time with it until we swapped SIMMs one at a time to : locate the bad one. If you can, swap the whole set of SIMMs on the : machine you want to get working, and test the others on a separate : setup. In our situation it took several days, because the pattern : failure occurred only *after* the bad chip warmed up. Yecch! haha... I believe you. If you were daring enough, you could have speeded up the process by blowing a hair dryer at your SIMMs. ;-)) Another possibility is that you may have your computer cpu overclocked. I remember when I built my Cyrix P133+ system from scratch, the guy that sold me the CPU together with the motherboard had improperly set the jumpers, and over clocked the CPU to a Cyrix P166+. Everything was working just fine, but my Windoze was crashing every 5 minutes of use. Once I reset the jumpers for the proper settings to my Cyrix P133+ cpu, everything worked like a charm, even Windoze. I have FreeBSD, Linux, and Windoze all on one system. I can't think of anything else that may cause a computer to run and crash intermittenly. Most PC parts that you order from vendors should be good an reliable, unless of course you buy your stuff second handed from "Wack Willy's Wild" junk yard/garage sale. ;-)) This brings back memories of the time when I bought a second handed modem off from some guy for my 386 long ago. I installed the modem, and it did not work. I gave the darn thing many tries, different IRQ, different slot, and different configurations from my telecommunications program. It works sometimes but not other times. If you think that's weird, you haven't seen anything yet. ;-)) When I start an application, it will start up fine, but then computer entire computer locks up five minutes later and the modem starts to sound. In fact, the modem is so haunted, it sometimes even dials to "Mars" when I reboot my computer at boot time. After three full weeks of frustration, I finally gave up on the modem. I took out the modem, and guess what? Everything in my computer worked like a charm just as before. ;-)) I returned the modem back to the guy I got it from. He swore that it works, and laughed when I told him about my problems with them modem... till he later installed it on his computer. Whenever he booted up his computer, he would get, "HARDDRIVE FAILURE." All of this is true, and I'm not kidding. The moral of this story is to NOT trust stuff you buy, not 100% at least, off from other people as second handed computer equipment. : -- : Ken : Are you interested in | : byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com : over the Internet? | ;-)) This reminds me of Steve Jobs. Guess why he called his first company with Woz Apple? Take a "byte" out of an Apple. Patrick Leung pleung@cs.buffalo.edu +-------+ | Linux | <<---- Click here to run Linux +-------+