periodic freeze and reset

[Ghirai]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2007 17:46:54 -0400
Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com> wrote:

> Ghirai <ghirai at ghirai.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 3 Sep 2007 16:31:41 -0400
> > Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > Ghirai <ghirai at ghirai.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello list,
> > > > 
> > > > My desktop running 6.2-STABLE is freezing then resetting shortly after.
> > > > This behaviour happens every couple hours, for no apparent reason.
> > > > 
> > > > I checked messages, etc, there's nothing there.
> > > > 
> > > > This is getting annoying... :/
> > > > 
> > > > I'd appreciate any hints/where to look/what to look for.
> > > 
> > > My first guess would be hardware problems.  Have you run memtest?
> > > Checked for cooling problems?  cpuburn to test for a flaky CPU?
> > > 
> > 
> > Haven't ran any hw monitors/test, but i spend time periodically in windows,
> > about 2-3 days each time, and it didn't crash reset.
> > 
> > That's why i think there are no hw issues.
> > 
> > In FreeBSD the freeze+resets occur and seemingly random intervals, but
> > not longer than 30 hours. Mostly within 6 hours.
> 
> That seems to suggest that it isn't hardware, but doesn't completely
> eliminate the possibility.
> 
> Often, vendors write drivers to work around known deficiencies in their
> hardware.  Since FreeBSD's drivers are written to the specs, they may
> expose these deficiencies while the vendor's drivers intentionally avoid
> them.
> 
> Additionally, FreeBSD seems to work hardware in different ways than
> Windows, thus tickling corner cases with hardware that's just barely
> failing.  Run some hardware tests to be sure.
> 
> Also, the driver issue that was raised is a good point.  I've seen a
> number of buggy NICs where the vendor's driver worked around the
> bugginess so it _looked_ like FreeBSD was at fault.
> 
> Make sure all your hardware is known to work on FreeBSD.
> 


All right, i'll do some tests with the NIC, change it, etc.
I'll post back results.

Thanks.

-- 
Regards,
Ghirai.