Server crashes

[Bill Vermillion]

Deep in the forest in the dark of night on Sun, Dec
23, 2007 at 23:43 with a cackle and an evil grin
freebsd-questions-request at freebsd.org cast another eye of newt
into the brew and chanted:

> Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:43:13 -0500 (EST)
> From: "Monah Baki" <mbaki at whywire.net>
> Subject: Server crashes

> Hi All,

> I'm running a very old server (P3, dual 600Mhz, SCSI 9GB
> harddrive). Applications that I run on it is MySQL and Apache. I
> have no problem with server uptime but I am not able to update
> because once I run the command:

> make buildkernel KERNCONF=SMP

> Server crashes here

> mkdep -f .depend_aicasm -a   -nostdinc -I/usr/include -I.
> -I/usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm
> /usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm/aicasm.c
> /usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm/aicasm_symbol.c
> aicasm_gram.c aicasm_macro_gram.c aicasm_scan.c aicasm_macro_scan.c
> echo aicasm: /usr/lib/libc.a /usr/lib/libl.a >> .depend_aicasm
> cd /usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm; 
> MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP/modules  make -DNO_CPU_CFLAGS
> all
> cc -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -nostdinc -I/usr/include -I.
> -I/usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm  -c
> /usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm/aicasm.c
> cc -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -nostdinc -I/usr/include -I.
> -I/usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm  -c
> /usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm/aicasm_symbol.c
> cc -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -nostdinc -I/usr/include -I.
> -I/usr/src/sys/modules/aic7xxx/aicasm/../../../dev/aic7xxx/aicasm  -c
> aicasm_gram.c

> This happens everytime, is there anywhere I can look to see what's going
> on, or if it's a hardware problem, where is the cause so I can replace.

> Thanks

You said things just stopped and you had to reboot.  Often that is
memory related and compiling the OS and kernel is one of the
best ways to find bad memory :-(.  It puts a stress on the machine
that few other things will.

Someone else asked if you could ping the machine.  I have found
that even when a machine is literaly dead you can still ping it,
as the NIC cards seem not to notice that everything else is dead.
I don't consdier a returned ping to be a test of much of anything.

Bill

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com