BTX halted on backup server

[Matthew Seaman]

On Sat, Nov 20, 2004 at 10:03:07PM -0800, Jeffrey S. Kaye wrote:
> We have two servers, one mirrors the other.  The backup server showed 
> the following a couple days ago.  It's still down.  Any ideas?  The 
> primary is working just fine.
> -jk
> 
> FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8
> (root at freebsd-stable.sentex.ca <mailto:root at freebsd-stable.sentex.ca>, 
> Thu Apr 3 08:41:45 GMT 2003)
> Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
> /kernel text=0x171368 data=0x2342c+0x1bd08
> \
> Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
> Booting [kernel]...
> -
> int=0000000d  err=00000000  efl=00010093   eip=002b200a
> eax=0011e2e0   ebx=00000000  ecx=00000003   edx=000274c0
> esi=ffffffff   edi=0003841c   ebp=00094a7d   esp=0009ea3f
> cs=0008   ds=0010   es=0010   fs=0010   gs=0010   ss=0010
> cs:eip=6f 6e 73 6f 6c 65 3d 76-69 64 63 6f 6e 73 6f 6c
> ss:esp=00 00 00 00 00 47 95 00-00 00 00 00 80 04 00 20
> BTX halted

The boot loader cannot read the kernel from the disk drive into
memory.  That's pretty bad.  Often it indicates that the disk has
crashed. Or it could be a memory stick going AWOL.  Or the CPU itself
may have died.

You need to investigate the machine to check if all of the hardware is
in working order, and then depending on what you find, you probably
need to reinstall and recover the system from backup.

Try running memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.org/) from a floppy for
several testing cycles: if memtest86 shows errors, then you've
definitely got bad memory.  If it doesn't show any errors, then you
might still have bad memory, just beyond what memtest86 can detect;
however that is quite rare.

Next try booting from disk2 (from the installation media set) -- if
that succeeds in booting and the memtest86 stuff ran OK then the CPU
is probably OK.

Then you can try running fsck(8) on all of the filesystems on your
hard drive -- you may need to run it several times over the same
partition.  With luck you'll be able to get it to say 'filesystem
clean'.  Note that even if fsck(8) says the filesystem is clean,
various files and directories may have disappeared, so recovering from
backup once you've verified the hardware would be a good idea.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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