Requesting advice for panic: vm_thread_new: kstack allocation failed

[Charles Swiger]

On Jun 5, 2006, at 2:00 PM, Lonnie Olson wrote:
> I have been fighting this issue for months now.  I am about to give  
> up and go back to FreeBSD 4.x.  I am looking for suggestions now.
>
> 1. What does this panic really mean?

I believe it implies that the kernel address space is exhausted, so  
when something tried to start up a new kthread, this failed because  
the kernel does not have enough memory to allocate a new stack for  
that thread.

> 2. Any ideas for a work around?  (kernel options, patches, anything)

Set up a cron job to run "sysctl kern.malloc > /var/tmp/kern_malloc"  
every minute or whatnot, and take a look at the last entry you get  
before the machine panics.  That will help identify what is running  
your kernel out of memory.

> 3. Would a bug report actually get anywhere? (bad experiences in  
> the past, 93809)

Maybe.  You'll need to provide more information than just a dmesg,  
but even if you don't get a specific solution to your problem in the  
short term, having things in the PR database will help over the long  
term...

-- 
-Chuck