Something rotten in the OS?

[Vulpes Velox]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 10:13:30 -0700
Steve Warwick <ukla at comcast.net> wrote:

> Hey All, 
> 
> I have just had my 2nd HD crash in a year - different machine, different
> type of drive etc - the only consistency is the OS and the installed
> software.

More info on this would be handy.  Such as what version of FBSD, what file
system, and ect.

Personally I would the blame somewhere else than FreeBSD. I have only had 3 HD
problems with FBSD in the three years I have been using it and all of them have
been actual problems with the HD and not FBSD.

> It looks like this is some kind of overflow????

What is it doing? Just saying a HD crash does not say much. What type of error
messages.

> This problem seems to start after about a month and is indicated by there
> being fragments of the kernel config data in the daily kernel log messages.
> I asked about that on this list but people seemed to think it was just some
> kind of log rotation.

More info would be useful.

> I caught the machine a couple of months ago with nearly all the swap used
> (800meg out of 1 gig) and rebooted which kept the machine happy.

Sounds like a problem with one of the apps on it.
 
> I recently noticed the kernel log messages had the config fragments again
> and was going to to a reboot - but alas too late. The machine is down, HD is
> damaged and we are trying to get data off the drive...

The HD is damaged?  That sounds more like a hardware related problem than
software.
 
> This is exactly the problem that occurred 6 months ago. That time I put it
> down to lousy overheated hosting but now I don't have that excuse.
> 
> Has anyone seen this before?
> 
> Does FreeBSD have to be re-booted every month for safety?

LOL, no it does not. I have no problem racking up massive uptimes on my rueter
which is running BSD. The only time I have to reboot is after making a massive
after cvsuping and doing a makeworld and rebuilding the kernel.

> Should I give up and use Linux?
 
I truely doubt you would get any improvement over BSD from switching to linux. I
personally advoid it due the hackishly thrown together nature of most distros
and many parts in general.



Any ways... it sounds like you have seriously misconfigured something, bad
hardware, or some really crappy piece software. The 1st and 2nd thought do not
make any sense in the damaged HD, so it would be most likely bad hardware.


BTW is you seriously want help, try to provide more info.


> A frustrated sysadmin
> 
> 
> Steve