Crashing with HP/Compaq DL360 G3 [paging kernel developer]

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeremy Kister" <freebsd-01 at jeremykister.com>
To: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: Crashing with HP/Compaq DL360 G3 [paging kernel developer]


> On 6/21/2006 2:25 AM, Jeremy Kister wrote:
> > I have sudden [seemingly random] reboots with all four (see
> >
http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/questions/2006-02/msg01605.html)
> > while running FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE through the PreReleases and now with
> > 6.1-STABLE.
>
> I just found a post suggesting that IPF with SMP is bad.  See:
> http://www.monkey.org/freebsd/archive/freebsd-stable/200507/msg00481.html
>
> I do have IPF running on all four boxes and SMP is obviously also
> configured.
>
> Does anyone have data beyond this that says I should remove IPF from the
> kernel or set ipf_enable="NO" in my rc.conf ?  or was this issue
> resolved in FreeBSD 6 ?
>

If you read the complete thread you would have come across this:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=83220

And if you read that you would see it was resolved to the unsatisfaction
of the PR filer.  That is, replace ipf with pf or fix the program.

This is in the category of "doctor it hurts when I do this"

Root can "rm -r /" and once most of the system is gone, it will
probably panic pretty soon.

Root can unmount volumes and make the system panic as well.

Neither operation is a failure of the operating system.

For ipf to work, the program must be given pretty deep control of
the OS.  If the program uses that control to make the system
crash, then who is at fault?  The OS?  I don't think so.

You might also consider that most people use ipfw.

One of the benefits of Open Source is that you can run what
you want instead of running what the rest of the lemmings run.
The downside of this is that if your doing that and it blows up
on you, you have to fix it yourself.  The developers are going to
fix the things that the rest of the lemmings have problems with
first, before working on off-the-beaten-trail stuff, simply because
there's more lemmings than you.

If you don't like it, see Microsoft - oh I forgot, they handle their
bugs exactly the same way - except you can't even fix them for
them.


Ted