FreeBSD crashes

[Bill Moran]

In response to "n j" <nino80 at gmail.com>:

> > I hope someone can help me. I have started to experience
> > seemingly random crashes causing FreeBSD to shutdown and
> > power off the machine. The only trace I can find as far as
> > the reason for the crash is concerned are the following
> > excerpts from /var/log/messages:
> >
> > Mar 23 11:52:36 myhostname kernel: <<22>N>NMIMN NIMIMII IISISSSAAA
> > A  20,22 200E,0,I, S  EIEEASI ISAAS f Aff ff
> > Mar 23 11:52:36 myhostname kernel: f
> > Mar 23 11:52:36 myhostname kernel:
> > Mar 23 11:52:36 myhostname kernel: f<
> > Mar 23 11:52:36 myhostname kernel: 2<>2>
> > Mar 23 11:52:36 myhostname kernel: f
> > Mar 23 11:52:36 myhostname kernel:
> > Mar 23 11:52:47 myhostname syslogd: exiting on signal 15
> > Mar 23 13:04:32 myhostname syslogd: kernel boot file is
> > /boot/kernel/kernel
> 
> Small update: I have received some feedback that this seemingly random
> junk is related to ipfw
> (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=116458).
> 
> However, I have also received information that this junk might not be
> completely random and could be, in fact, related to NMI (non-maskable
> interrupt) which would suggest hardware error. Any thoughts on this?

I suspect you're going to have to get crash dumps in order to get
any real answers:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug.html

Based purely on the symptom that the crashes started occurring unrelated
to any other activity, I would guess that you've got a hardware issue.
Have you tried running things like cpuburn and memtest to see if you
can reproduce it?

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com