No auto reboot after panic

[Alex Zbyslaw]

(This message started life on questions, but no responses :-(  If 
there's a better list to try, please point me!  I have no clue how 
rebooting actually works).

Setup: Dell 2850 running i386 FreeBSD 5.4-p5 (or so), ACPI enabled and 
apparently working (shutdown -p or -r work fine).

After a kernel panic, the console showed "Automatic reboot in 60 seconds 
or press any key to interrupt", (or words to that effect), but actually 
the machine just sat there for several hours.

When I got to the console, pressing a key said it was interrupting the 
automatic reboot (as if the key press had happened in the 60 second 
window) and pressing another key rebooted the server.

Does anyone have any idea why the server didn't reboot automatically, 
and what might make it reboot next time it panics (if there is a next 
time)?

I'm sure I've seen a similar problem mentioned before, but searching the 
mail archives and google didn't turn up anything useful that I could see.

Thanks,

--Alex