*BSD News Article 98273


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From: Kelly Yancey <kbyanc@freedomnet.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Problem with 2.2.1 Install !!!
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 17:44:21 -0400
Organization: FreedomNet
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Message-ID: <33AC4B33.F53E214F@freedomnet.com>
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	  <33A282BD.31DFF4F5@freebsd.org> <5o47mr$e49@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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To: Joerg Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:43368

J Wunsch wrote:

> David Henshaw <dhenshaw@silas.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > > This means the page tables on your machine are corrupted.  Oh
> well, i
> > > don't say it's not the os's fault, but it's not unlikely a memory
> > > problem either.  At any rate, it will require serious
> investigation
> > > before it's possible to spot this (since the time when the page
> table
> > > is corrupted and the spot where the crash happens might be very
> > > different).
>
> > How can I go about fixing the problem so I can use the ed0 driver ?
>
> See above: i can't give you any hints apart from saying that it will
> requires serious work, like single-stepping the kernel in the
> debugger, in order to find the spot where it trashes the page tables.
> In the worst case, you'll wast dozens of hours to finally find that
> you cannot really spot it, and it's likely a hardware failure.  In the
>
> best case, you find a bug nobody else encountered so far.
>

   I experienced the same problem under 2.1.7. In my case it actually
had nothing at all to do withe page tables though as you have been told
so far. When I first installed my 3com, it was set to use IRQ 10 and
periodically I would get a similar message to the one you got, but it
said trap 10 instead of 12. Out of despiration I tried setting the 3com
to IRQ 11 and oddly enough I started getting fault #11 on occassion.
Finally, I narrowed it down to the fact that the 3com was disabling
interrupts for extended periods of time. This is set by the Modem Speed
option in the config that comes on the disk with the 3com. In the help
for the config utility it states that if you experience problems to up
the modem speed parameter. When I was having problems it was set to "No
modem", now even though I do not have a modem hooked up I have it set to
9600 and haven't a problem since. According to 3com the it uses the
modem speed setting to determine how long it can safely disable
interrupts while servicing network interrupts. You might want to try
setting yours to 38400 and see if the problem persists.

  Kelly
 ~kbyanc@freedomnet.com~