Fatal trap 12

Alex Zbyslaw xfb52 at dial.pipex.com
Mon Jan 19 09:52:21 PST 2004


Daren Desjardins wrote:
> Over the weekend my bsd 4.9 apparantly rebooted for kicks by itself,
> reporting a fatal trap 12 in messages. I looked through the list history
> and found some posts indicating it may be a memory issue. 

If you suspect a memory problem, then try getting your BIOS to find it. 
Reboot your machine then press whatever key you need to get into your BIOS.

Look for an option which turns on extended memory checking on boot (or which 
turns off quick memory checking), turn on extended check, save the setting, 
reboot and watch the BIOS cycle through endless memory checks. If it finds a 
problem it'll tell you.

If it does, then you'll have to try removing memory chips one-by-one to try to 
find the one at fault.  (Note that  motherboards often (always?) require the 
memory chips to be inserted sequentially.  I.e. if you take out the first 
chip, you have to move all the others up -- you can't just leave the first 
slot empty).  Make sure to use some kind of anti-static protection when 
handling memory chips, otherwise you really will have a memory problem.

--Alex


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list