Subject: mysterious reboots
To: None <netbsd-help@netbsd.org, port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Wenchi Liao <wliao@midway.uchicago.edu>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/19/1999 11:37:36
I've been pretty happy with my netbsd 1.4/i386 box so far.
It is mainly desktop use (lots of network and x stuff in
the day, nothing really at night) with a GENERIC sans
pcmcia/scsi/kitchen sink kernel. The hardware is a micron
with a pent. mmx.

For some reason, the machine will reboot in the middle of
the night. I don't think this is some wierd exploit/trojan
horse thing, since it started happening when the machine
was really new, and I have all sorts of security devices
and filters in place.

I know it isn't a cron job, because I killed cron for a
while, and it still happens. I don't see anything in the
logs, and it behaves as if the power got tripped.

I was using the machine one night when it rebooted. I guess
this rules out some wierd apm interaction (since I was
active and the bios shouldn't have kicked in).

The only clue I have is that the nbsd machine is an amanda
backup client, and the amanda server logs the inability to
dump a different filesystem every night. I can't tell if
this is just coincidence, or causal. The reboots don't
occur at the same times every night. It seems to range from
8:25 to 9:30 (or at least that's when the boot sequence
gets logged).

I'm totally stumped as to where else to look for why this
is happening.

To summarize:
- reboot at different times
- not cron
- probably not apm
- may be related to running dump
- not specific to to a particular filesystem
- GENERIC kernel sans scsi/pcmcia/exotic NICs

WL