4.9 kernel panics on a poweredge 2650

[Andrew Kinney]

On 23 Jan 2004 at 13:50, Bogdan TARU wrote:

> 
> 
>  Hi hackers,
> 
>  I am experiencing kernel panics on a poweredge 2650 each day around
>  3am (usually the machine comes up at 3:04am). The kernel panics are
>  reproductable by running: /etc/periodic/security/100.chksetuid (in
>  fact by runnning find on /usr with -perms). The problem lies
>  somewhere in /usr/ports. Deleting the /usr/ports tree doesn't solve
>  it, trying a cvs up of /usr/ports results in a crash again.
> 

Our experience is that repetitive crashes when dealing with large 
numbers of files (like the ports tree) generally points to hitting 
some OS resource limit.  Some things to check that may or may not 
apply to this particular problem:

sysctl vm.zone

Make sure you're not hitting any of those limits.

sysctl vm.kvm_size
sysctl vm.kvm_free

If kvm_free is running low just prior to the crash, you might want to 
increase your KVA_PAGES (see lint) and rebuild your kernel.

Of course, this is all hit and miss guess work until you have a crash 
dump, so getting a crash dump and a traceback from a kernel identical 
to your running kernel with debugging symbols would be a logical 
first step if you want to avoid any guessing.  If your tracebacks 
show failures in random locations, you're probably looking at bad 
RAM.  If you always fail in the same spot with each crash, then it is 
just a matter of determining why and correcting it.

I believe the freebsd  developer's handbook has instructions on how 
to setup a system to do an automatic crash dump for any panic.  It is 
relatively straightforward.

Sincerely,
Andrew Kinney
President and
Chief Technology Officer
Advantagecom Networks, Inc.
http://www.advantagecom.net