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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!portc01.blue.aol.com!cliffs.rs.itd.umich.edu!howland.erols.net!feed1.news.erols.com!news From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Major system problems... Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 20:35:49 +0000 Organization: Erol's Internet Services Lines: 89 Message-ID: <32C19025.4FE0@www.play-hookey.com> References: <59nn0r$h64@robin.theramp.net> Reply-To: kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; U) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:33101 Jordan Klein wrote: > > I am having major failures on my system, with FreeBSD and need some > assistance interpreting the errors. Let me describe my hardware > before going further: > > 486/120 system board, AMD processor, 256 K cache > 48mb non-parity ram, 3 16mb simms > Genoa Phantom 64V-2001 video with 2mb vram (S3 Trio64+) > Adaptec AHA-2940 PCI SCSI controller > Generic NE2000 ethernet card (isa) > Sound Blaster 16 (isa) > Fujitsu M1606S-512 1 gig drive (internal, id 0) > Fujitsu M2694ES-512 1 gig drive (internal, id 1) > NEC 8Xi CDROM (internal, id 2) > Quantum FIREBALL1080S 1 gig drive (external, id 3) > Archive Python 28388-XXX 4mm DAT (external, id 4) > > My SCSI bus is terminated properly (last internal drive, and last > external drive). This system was working fine when I first > started with FreeBSD, and for about a year with Linux, Windows 95, > and Windows NT (3.51 and 4.0). > > Here's the problem. When I'm using it, things seem fine at first. > It boots just fine, I have no problem getting my PPP networking > going, X, etc. But after a while, things deteriorate. Worse, > it seems things deteriorate faster if I do something that does > a lot of disk access. I've had data corruption, random reboots, > kernel panics, and so forth. I know that I'm having hardware > problems, but I can't identify the source. I've already swapped > the system board, that did fix anything. I've run memory tests > on my simms, and that showed them working fine. If someone can > identify the following error messages and give me an idea what's > failing, I would be VERY grateful. Most of the hardware is > still under warranty, so it's just a matter of getting it > replaced. > > Two most recent errors: > ahc0: Issued Channel A Bus Reset. 2 SCBs aborted > sd1(ahc0:1:0) timed out in dataout phase, SCSISIGI==0x0 > SEQADDR==0x0 > spec_getpages: I/O read error > vm_fault: pager input (probably hardware) error, PID 236 failure > Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode > > This was when I tried to play an audio cd with cdcontrol. > > And next, while rebooting because netscape 3.01 was segfaulting > (signal 11) on me: > Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode > fault virtual address = 0x83015a61 > fault code = supervisor read, page not present > instruction pointer = 0x8:0xf0178590 > code segment = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b > = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 > processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resue, IOPL=0 > current process = 9029 (reboot) > interrupt mask = > panic: page fault > > I get these kinds of errors at random times, and all I can think > is that it's probably either my memory, or something on my > SCSI bus is failing. Any help in pinpointing the offending > hardware would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. I encountered a wide range of random faults for awhile, using hardware that all diagnostic software I had said was perfectly good. Through a long series of trial-and-error moves, I finally isolated it to the cache RAM. I can't be sure that your problem is the same, of course, but it's easy to check. Try disabling the external cache in the ROM BIOS (internal cache is on the CPU; you can leave it up). Then try the system and see what happens. If it now works correctly, you may want to check out the cache chips directly. I discovered that FreeBSD is enough more efficient than MeSs-DOS that it will almost certainly overrun 20-ns cache chips. However, by using 15-ns cache chips, I could run the cache with no trouble. It could also be a pattern fault in one of your SIMMs, but I'd check the cache first. I hope this helps! -- Ken Are you interested in | byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com over the Internet? |