Memory handling problem with FreeBSD 5.3?

[Scott Long]

Christian R. wrote:
> I have installed FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE i386 on a new Dell PowerEdge 2850,
> but it crashes under load like "make buildworld" with a "panic: page
> fault".
> 
> The server has following configuration: 2x Intel Xeon 3.4 GHz (800 MHz
> FSB), 6x 1 GB DDR2 ECC RAM and Perc 4e/Di (LSI Logic/amr driver).
> 
> After some days working on the problem, I think there is some problem
> with handling the memory. The only way I have got the server to become
> stable was by switching a special option in the Dell BIOS, which
> limits the system memory to 256 MB.
> 
> I have tried to limit the memory to 4 GB by activating a spare memory
> bank, but the server still crashes. Disabling HTT in BIOS and ACPI in
> the loader also didn't solved the problem.
> 
> The kernel is compiled with SMP of course and PAE because of >4 GB
> memory. I have removed all the unnecessary devices.
> 
> Dells own diagnostic tool couldn't find any hardware errors. The
> special memory test also passed all tests. I have also tried with
> memtest (http://www.memtest.org/) which either could find any memory
> errors.
> 
> Has anyone an idea to a solution? Has anyone succeeded running FreeBSD
> 5.3 on similar hardware?
> 
> Would it maybe be better to run the AMD64 version of FreeBSD 5.3? I
> think the i386 version should be more stable?
> 

Upgrade to 5-STABLE.  I fixed these problems a few weeks ago.

Scott