reboot after panic

[Clifton Royston]

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 03:15:51PM -0400, Stephen Clark wrote:
> Matthew X. Economou wrote:
> >Steve,
> >
> >I recall having to set dumpdev in /etc/rc.conf before I could get
> >FreeBSD to reboot automatically after a panic.  I have dumpdev=AUTO
> >set on all of my headless servers.  If you are feeling especially
> >brave, you can also set fsck_y_enable=YES and background_fsck=NO.
> >
> >Good luck!  ;)
> >
> Hmmm... I have that set. It only seems to not reboot on one
> system I have.

  FWIW, I've had problems with 6.2 not rebooting reliably on several
SMP P4 Xeon systems; the problem seems to be that sometimes while
dumping it either freezes completely or double-faults and hangs at that
point until physically reset.

  This problem appeared simultaneously on several SMP servers when they
were upgraded to 6.2, after they had run reliably for years on FreeBSD
4.x.  Adding insult to injury, when it does dump successfully, I don't
reliably get an image saved in /var/crash.  (And if I did, it doesn't
appear that it would do me any good as nobody is interested any longer
in problems with 6.2.)

  Thankfully, via a combination of adding RAM and tuning kernel
parameters I eventually got them to where they'll reliably stay up for
reasonably long stretches, certainly more than the 20 days uptime I was
getting when I first upgraded them.
  -- Clifton
 
-- 
    Clifton Royston  --  cliftonr at iandicomputing.com / cliftonr at lava.net
       President  - I and I Computing * http://www.iandicomputing.com/
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