My server gets kernel panic every 7th day

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

If I may interject, why should he bother?

Seems to me his next step should be setting up a new server
with a fresh FreeBSD copy on it, duplicating the 3 jails, then
firing off the 4 periodics and seeing if that blows up.

If so that is enough info to file a bug report, and he can
then simply adjust his script so that the periodics aren't all
run at the same time.  If someone else wants to spend the time
researching this - like YOU for example - then great.

>From the Project's point of view, his problems aren't interesting
unless they can be reproduced - and from his point of view all he
wants to do is fix the problem - and he now knows how to do it.
(run the periodic weekly at different times)  Grubbing around in
a dump traceback does not prove that a problem is reproducible.

Ted Mittelstaedt
Author, The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Greg 'groggy'
> Lehey
> Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 2:38 PM
> To: Daniel Johansson
> Cc: FreeBSD Questions
> Subject: Re: My server gets kernel panic every 7th day
>
>
> On Sunday, 19 December 2004 at 23:35:18 +0100, Daniel Johansson wrote:
> > On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:59:19 +1030, Greg 'groggy' Lehey
> > <grog at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >> On Saturday, 18 December 2004 at 11:50:02 -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> >>> On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 11:57:35AM +0100, Daniel Johansson wrote:
> >>>> Hi, i've had my server up for over a year now and it's been
> rock solid
> >>>> but for the latest weeks the server has rebooted evert Saturday at
> >>>> exact 04:19:57 because of a find command. I have no idea why and I've
> >>>> checked the cron log and I don't think any crontab is runned at that
> >>>> time. Not as far as I can see from the cron log. Anyway find
> makes the
> >>>> server get a kernel panic and it reboots. This is the fourth
> week in a
> >>>> row it happens and I've checked the hardware, no problems at all.
> >>>
> >>> How did you "check the hardware"?  Hardware failure is by far the
> >>> most common cause of "strange panics under abnormal load [such as
> >>> when the weekly cron job runs]".
> >>
> >> If this panic occurs repeatedly under certain circumstances, it's
> >> probably not hardware.  Anyway, there's not much point standing
> >> outside and scratching our heads.  We have a facility for analysing
> >> this kind of problem: the processor dump and kernel debugger.
> >
> > Yeah, I want to say thank you for your help. I think I've been able to
> > reproduce the kernel panic now, finalay!
> >
> > On my server I run 3 jails and every night at 04:15 when it runs
> > periodic weekly it runs it in 3 jails + the host enviroment. This
> > seems to cause the kernel panic, I don't really know why yet. I can
> > run periodic weekly separatly in every jail + the host without kernel
> > panic but when I run it at the same time on all places it kernel
> > panics.
>
> What does the dump backtrace show?
>
> > It can still be the PSU, don't have any other atm to try with. I'll
> > do some more testing and see if I can get any more info.
>
> There's no point looking at the hardware until you've looked at the
> dump.
>
> Greg
> --
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
>