random FreeBSD panics

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 05:01:02PM +0000, Masoom Shaikh wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 5:38 PM, Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > On 28 March 2010 16:42, Masoom Shaikh <masoom.shaikh at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> lets assume if this is h/w problem, then how can other OSes overcome
> >> this ? is there a way to make FreeBSD ignore this as well, let it
> >> result in reasonable performance penalty.
> >
> > Very probably, if only we could detect where the problem is.
> > Try adding "options     PRINTF_BUFR_SIZE=128" to the kernel
> 
> this option is already there

The key word in Ivan's phrase is "less mangled".  Neither use of or
increasing PRINTF_BUFR_SIZE solves the problem of interspersed console
output.  I've been ranting/raving about this problem for years now; it
truly looks like a mutex lock issue (or lack of such lock), but I've
been told numerous times that isn't the case.

To developers: what incentives would help get this issue well-needed
attention?  This problem makes kernel debugging, panic analysis, and
other console-oriented viewing basically impossible.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |