5.3-BETA7 install cd: kernel trap 12 with interrupts disabled

[Andre Oppermann]

Robert Watson wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Guido van Rooij wrote:
> 
>>It turns out this was a memory problem. Refitting the dimms was all
>>that was needed to 'solve' the issue. The weird thing is that
>>1. The BIOS had memtesting enabled and did not complain
>>2. W2K seemed to install ok (though I never let it hit the disk)
>>3. FBSD would repeatedly crash at exactly the same spot.
>>
>>I am beginning to wonder if we should have a boot option that enables a
>>thorough memtest from within the kernel...(e.g. boot -m). 
> 
> I guess the old /dev/test_for_shoddy_workmanship driver is working :-).
> 
> It's probably just bad luck -- BIOS memory testing is generally pretty
> poor, and it could just be FreeBSD stored your root vnode pointer (or some
> other critical thing) in a memory word that Win2K was using for an icon,
> so a single bit twiddle did pretty different things.  Glad it's fixed.  I
> occasionally wonder if we shouldn't build a memory tester into the FreeBSD
> boot loader to help diagnose this sort of stuff, though.  Not to run every
> boot, but as a diagnostics option.

That would be really cool and useful!

-- 
Andre