Kernel Compilation...

[Nikolas Britton]

On 1/4/06, Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/06, Crispy Beef <crispy.beef at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Nikolas Britton wrote:
> > > To rule out hardware problems rebuild the generic kernel using the
> > > virgin GENERIC kernel config file:
> > >
> > > 0. If you've messed with /etc/make.conf change it back to the defaults!
> > > 1. su
> > > 2. cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf
> > > 3. rm -r ../compile/GENERIC
> > > 4. config GENERIC
> > > 5. cd ../compile/GENERIC
> > > 6. make depend
> > > 7. make
> > > 8. make install
> > > 9. reboot
> > >
> > > If you can't get to step 8 you have a hardware problem (or FreeBSD
> > > wasn't installed correctly, see step 5 below):
> >
> > First time I tried this I had another seg fault (error 11) so did a complete
> > install from the CD again (kernel developer options).  It failed once during
> > that compile, then the second time it worked just fine.  I then did my own
> > config cutting out all the stuff I don't need and it's compiled just fine.
> > Strange...
> >
> > Thinking about it, this is the only time I've got the sources from the CD.  I
> > always grabbed them from an ftpe server via sysinstall, maybe the newer
> > sources were causing problems like the guys mentioned earlier?
> >
> > Got a version of MemTest86 running too and that went for a couple of hours
> > without any errors showing up, will run it overnight to be sure.
> >
> > I guess the next thing is to have a go at make buildworld with options in
> > make.conf and see if it barfs then.
> >
> > Thanks for the help. :-)
> >
> > Paul
> >
>
> Still sounds like a hardware problem. Maybe the laptop is overheating,
> compiling software is always hard on a system. Also I don't think
> Memtest86 will show you anything even if your ram is bad. The best way
> to find out is to just change it out if you have extra somewhere or
> remove part of it and/or shuffle it around.
>
> Check for thermal issues, maybe build the kernel with the laptop in
> the refrigerator or something :-). If you do something like that make
> sure you don't get condensation buildup when you take it out of the
> cold and into the warm... but the humidity is always low in the winter
> so it shouldn't be to much of a problem.
>

One more thing. You said this was an older laptop (400ish MHz) right?
If so you better double check that ACPI is working and that the
thermal trip points are set correctly. I had a major problem with an
Armada 1750 (PII-M at 366MHz i440BX) in that ACPI was totally broken.
FreeBSD 5.x would never trip the fans on. The system hit would 100C
(212F) and then FreeBSD would auto shutdown the system. I sold the
laptop after I found that out and bought a better one, an Omnibook
6000 (PIII at 700MHz with 440BX). I still had major problems with ACPI so
I decide to just install SuSE 9.3 Pro on it. SuSE worked perfect.

FreeBSD's ACPI implementation and laptops with i440BX/MX or earlier
chipsets don't mix well. sysctl will help you with the thermal
settings and http://acpi.sourceforge.net/ will help if you need a new
DSDT. this will help some too:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/acpi-debug.html