iBook G4 chipset failure causing segfaults?

[Bruce Cran]

Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> Bruce Cran wrote:
>> I've recently found that my G4 iBook is causing programs to segfault
>> when they start going into swap: the effect is worse on -current but
>> I'm also seeing it on 7.2. For example, if I run a program to 
>> allocate 500MB the
>> system will swap out most programs since I only have 512MB RAM. After a
>> while dhclient and sendmail segfault while the test program keeps
>> running; I've also seen tcsh and login segfault too as I logout. I
>> originally found the problem when building clangbsd, where 'as' would
>> segfault when it started building the large C++ files that come with
>> clang. I can run a normal buildworld so I guess this is more of a
>> problem with the chipset (caused by swapping?) than a memory problem?
>>
>> I've run the Apple Hardware Test utility over 30 loops without any
>> errors - has anyone else seen this problem, and is it likely that the
>> hardware is simply starting to fail?
>>
>>   
> More likely there's a bug in the ATA driver, or the hard disk is 
> failing, and so swap is being corrupted somehow. Is there a way you 
> could try swapping to a different, external drive (firewire, for 
> instance), and see if the problem still exists?

I moved swap onto an external 500GB USB drive and also tried disabling 
ATA DMA on the internal HDD, but I kept seeing the segfaults.

-- 
Bruce