Big problems with 7.1 locking up :-(

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 15 Jan 2009, Pete French wrote:

>> In any case, if it starts to reproduceably recur, send out mail and we can 
>> see if we can track it down some more.  BTW, did you establish if the 
>> version of iLo you have has a remote NMI?  I seem to recall that some do, 
>> and being able to deliver an NMI is really quite valuable.
>
> OK, thanks. My iiLO2 appears to have the ability to generate an NMI oon 
> demand, so that could be used if/whhen the fault crops up again.
>
> thanks, will let this lie for now and resurrect the thread when I can get 
> some more useful data.

Excellent WRT NMI.  As long as you have DDB, KDB, and BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER 
compiled into the kernel, generating that should reliably get you into the 
debugger.  If it's possible to keep running with INVARIANTS and WITNESS, or 
just INVARIANTS if WITNESS slows things down too much, that would be 
desirable.  You might want to give the NMI a test run just to make sure it 
behaves as you think it should, though -- be aware that if DDB/KDB aren't 
compiled into the kernel, then an NMI will panic the box.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge