Kernel panic on PowerEdge 1950 under certain stress load

[Kris Kennaway]

Benjie Chen wrote:
> You are right, they may not be the same. From first look it seems like 
> they are similar based on the description of the problems -- system 
> stable, then under load related to network, get panic after different 
> time intervals. I just assumed that kernel is typically stable enough 
> that this kind of panic are rare (been using FBSD for 7 or 8 years now 
> and in heavy loads as well, never had kernel panics to deal with).

OK, that means it is likely it has absolutely nothing in common.

> I did reboot the system and set mpsafenet to 0 and I have not had a 
> crash since then (almost a day) running the same load, so that's 
> positive: at least it may be that that's the workaround, and I don't 
> need Dell to send me new memory modules to try...

That should only be considered a temporary workaround while you continue 
to obtain debugging information to solve the problem for good.  e.g. 
support for mpsafenet=0 has already been removed from 7.0.

> Kris or Ivan: I was wondering if you could briefly explain what your 
> guess the problem might be. I am curious what the cause of the problem 
> is. E.g. it seems like a race condition, but I am curious to know more 
> of the details...

It is impossible to say until you obtain some actual details about the 
panic :)

Kris