>In some email I received from Brett Lymn, sie wrote:
>[...]
>> Actually, in a lot of the cases panics are about the only thing you
>> can do.  What sort of handling do you want to do when the file system
>> finds the inode it is trying to free is already free?  Just say "gee
>> I musta lost the plot there someplace, I will just continue on..." to
>> do more damage to the file system.  How do you handle a hard error in
>> your swap space?  Just kill the process and continue on?  What if the
>> process is inetd?  or even init?

>I'm sure I've seen this behaviour with swap space and processes being
>killed in commercial Unixes...

I think he's referring to hard errors on the drive, not running out of
swap.

While sitting at the X console, I've seen a hard error on the drive in
the swap space take down a VAX Ultrix machine in the most vividly
colorful and violent way, once.  It's amazing what sort of
pyrotechnics you can witness on the graphics display while a machine
is literally freaking out. :-)  A panic might have been more correct,
but not nearly as much fun to watch.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
        --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
    NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
               Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX...
    NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
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