FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE source update fails during compilation

[Ralph Hempel]

Kris Kennaway wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 09:59:58AM +0200, Robert Joosten wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> ---cut!------
>>> /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/cc/cc_tools/../../../../contrib/gcc/genattrtab.c:6240: 
>>> internal compiler error: Segmentation fault: 11
>>> Please submit a full bug report,
>>> with preprocessed source if appropriate.
>>> See <URL:http://gcc.gnu.org/bugs.html> for instructions.
>>> {standard input}: Assembler messages:
>>> {standard input}:14060: Warning: partial line at end of file ignored
>>> *** Error code 1
>>> Stop in /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/cc/cc_tools.
>>> *** Error code 1
>>> Stop in /usr/src.
>>> *** Error code 1
>>> Stop in /usr/src.
>>> *** Error code 1
>>> Stop in /usr/src.
>> Yeah, I observed this too a few times. All the times on a poor little 
>> pentium 1/150 with 48meg ram (according dmesg). It's somewhat difficult 
>> too check but I suspect I run out of memory every time.
> 
> You will see it logged by syslog and/or on the console if you run out
> of memory (and swap) and a process is killed to make room (it will
> also usually not die with signal 11, rather signal 9).  If you do not
> see this then out-of-memory is not the cause, and it is also almost
> certain to be marginal or failing hardware.
> 
> Kris

I'll agree with Kris here. I have been banging my head against a
P4 1.6GHZ machine running 6.2 for a couple of weeks.

It would not do a "portsanp extract" without falling over with a sig 11
in the middle of the extract - leaving a few file clusters in
questionable state.

As it was a test machine, I swapped in a different HD controller, fresh
HD and it still failed. Then I installed 5.5 and it worked fine, but
very slowly compared to 6.2

So I went back to the 6.2 and it failed again. All on hardware I thought
was rock solid. Then I ran Memtest again and sure enough, the RAM had
gone bad. Popped in a fresh stick and now I'm running memtest for two
days without error now.

Sometimes the older hardware just isn't worth the grief...

Ralph