Installing 6.0-BETA5 on Ultra30: RED State Exception

[Gheorghe Ardelean]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Marius Strobl wrote:

>
> On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 02:33:29PM +0200, Gheorghe Ardelean wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have given to FreeBSD 6.0-BETA5 a try on my 250MHz Ultra30.
> > Unfortunately there are problems with it just from the beginning.
> >
> > The first problem I have encountered was the "Release name"
> > which is 6.0-BETA4. Because of this none of the distributions could be
> > found. After restarting and changing this in 6.0-BETA5 (in the Options
> > menu) the distributions could be found but after chunk 34 from bin I get a
> > RED State Exception.
> >

> The problem is that a corrected_ECC_error trap happens while
> handling another one. In general FreeBSD doesn't handle
> corrected_ECC_error traps very well. Nevertheless it means
> a hardware problem. Often these happen due to problems with
> the electrical contacts and re-seating the CPU and the memory
> modules solves them. If not you probably have a fault memory
> module if these traps happen regularly. The OBP diagnostics
> (vary from model to model however) and SunVTS should be able
> to identify a broken memory module.
> It's most likely just coincidence that you don't see them
> with FreeBSD 5.2, there where no changes since July '04
> which affect handling of corrected_ECC_error traps.

Sorry for the delay. I have finished installing FreeBSD on the Ultra30 by
doing a boot from CDROM and installing distributions over the network.
Maybe just by accident the RED State Exception did not occur again.
After installing I have buildworld and it worked. Maybe, as you suggest
was only some electrical contact.

> Btw., if you actually have a broken memory module would
> you ship it to me for implementing proper handling of
> corrected_ECC_error traps?

Yes, of course. But maybe the modules are ok but my setup wrong.
As I don't have 4 modules the same, I have installed in each bank only 2
identically modules. So I have now 4 banks with 2 modules each but the
access time is different in some banks (60ns vs. 70ns). Now I have bought
12 modules on ebay (same manufacturer, size and access time).

Regards,

Johny.