dmesg.boot - strange content...

[Randy Pratt]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 08:58:18 +0100
Morten Rønseth <morten.ronseth at webfx.no> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> 
> One of my servers running FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE has the following in its
> dmesg.boot file:
> 
> _max R  *Handler Int
>    6 coll_weights_max R  *Handler Int
>    7 expr_nest_max R  *Handler Int
>    8 line_max R  *Handler Int
>    9 re_dup_max R  *Handler Int
>    10 posix2_version R  *Handler Int
>    11 posix2_c_bind R  *Handler Int
>    12 posix2_c_dev R  *Handler Int
>    13 posix2_char_term R  *Handler Int
>    14 posix2_fort_dev R  *Handler Int
>    15 posix2_fort_run R  *Handler Int
>    16 posix2_localedef R  *Handler Int
>    17 posix2_sw_dev R  *Handler Int
>    18 posix2_upe R  *Handler Int
>    19 stream_max R  *Handler Int
>    20 tzname_max R  *Handler Int
> .
> .
> .
> .
> 
> 
> Now, this I have never seen before, I'm more used to output like this:
> 
> Copyright (c) 1992-2004 The FreeBSD Project.
> Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
>          The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
> FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #0: Fri Nov  5 04:19:18 UTC 2004
>      root at harlow.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
> Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
> .
> .
> .
> 
> 
> Does anybody know what is "wrong" on my 5.2.1 box?
> I cannot for the life of me figure what is going on...

I see some "corruption" of dmesg occasionally when I do a
warm-boot (shutdown -r now).  If I do a "shutdown -h now",
turn off power and wait about 15 seconds for any stored
energy in the capacitors to bleed down, then dmesg will
be as expected.

If this is the case, then I don't think that there's anything
wrong with your box.  If you reboot and the memory is not flushed,
then that buffer may still be intact and will get printed at
boot time.

I have one box that has a card-reader with an LED on the front.
When I "shutdown -h now" and press the power off switch on the
front, that LED will remain lit indicating that there is still
power being applied to the motherboard.  The ATX power supply
seems to leave some power on since the NUMLOCK key stays lit
even after the front panel power switch is pressed and the system
shut down.  To get a real power off condition, I have to shut the
power supply off with its integral switch on the rear of the
computer and wait for the LED to go out (~10 seconds).  Then,
I can reboot with a clean, normal dmesg.

Fortunately, in my case, reboots are not a frequent occurrence.

The next time you need to reboot, try a complete shutdown of
system and interrupting the power.

HTH,

Randy

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