VM pager read error

Bigbrother bigbrother at bonbon.net
Tue May 24 10:15:38 PDT 2005


> I have a distributed network of systems running FreeBSD 4.10-Release,
> and periodically, I see the following errors on the console:
>
> vm_fault: pager read error, pid 1 (init)

I have also a network with many diskless boxes of 4.11 FreeBSD and every now
and then I see messages like this. 
The process that dies varies...It is not always (init)..Some times it is
(mrtg) some times (sshd) or (syslogd) and some other processes that the
boxes are running.


I have resolved this situation by running a series of crontab scripts that
rlogin to every diskless box and checks/restarts every
service that is critical for that box (e.g. syslogd, cron, sshd...).

Of course if your (init )dies then you cannot do anything with it and you
should ask/phone a worker there to do a reboot on that machine. I think the
problem relies on poor hardware (my network has some low-end network cards).

It would be nice if we could find any solution to this (without buying new
cards).



Perhaps if we could define that some processes would never be swapped out
(like init) this problem would disappeared, but I
do not have time for such experiments.



BB


p.s. Even though people leave the office, perhaps crontab and periodic
execute some scripts...So perhaps the machines
have a high cpu load and some NFS packets are dropped resulting in the
process to die.

---
Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll
be warm for the rest of his life 



More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list