Advice on kernel panics

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 678, Issue 4, Message: 4
On Thu, 1 Jun 2017 10:27:49 +0200 Raimo Niskanen <raimo+freebsd at erix.ericsson.se> wrote:
 > On Thu, Jun 01, 2017 at 12:10:30AM -0500, Doug McIntyre wrote:
 > > On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 11:20:43AM +0200, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
 > > > I have a server that panics about every 3 days and need some advice on how
 > > > to handle that.
 > > 
 > > I'd expect it is some sort of hardware failure, as I would expect
 > > kernel panics more on the order of once a decade with FreeBSD. Ie.
 > > I've seen one or two on my hundred or so servers, but its pretty rare.
 > > 
 > > Check and recheck your hardware items. 
 > 
 > I have removed one of four memory capsules - panicked again.  Will rotate
 > through all of them...
 > 
 > > 
 > > Runup memtest86+. Check your drive hardware, turn on SMART checking.
 > 
 > I have run memtest86+ over night - no errors found.
 > 
 > I have installed smartmontools - no errors found, short and long self tests
 > on both disks run fine.  zpool scrub repaired 0 errors and has no known data
 > errors.

Everyone's suggesting hardware problems, and it's certainly worthwhile 
eliminating that possibility - but this could be a software/OS issue.

If it were me and hardware all checks out, I'd try posting the original 
report - plus other details about the box and setup that you've since 
mentioned - to freebsd-stable@, or maybe freebsd-fs@ since those fstat 
reports seem to point to possible FS/zfs issues? at a wild guess ..

One other hardware tester you might try is sysutils/stress which can 
pound CPU, I/O, VM, disk as hard and for as long as you like, without 
having to bring the box down.  I've used this lots to generate heavy 
loads.  Keep a close eye on system temperatures during longer tests.

Ah, just before posting, I see your latest with dmesg.  Just on a quick 
scan, I wonder if these are a bad indication?  Maybe just a side-issue, 
but powerd might not work, so again heat might be something to watch:

 est0: <Enhanced SpeedStep Frequency Control> on cpu0
 est: CPU supports Enhanced Speedstep, but is not recognized.

cheers, Ian