On Thu, 12 Aug 1999 02:03:45 -0700 
 Hal Murray <murray@pa.dec.com> wrote:

 > While testing the new pciide code, I landed in the console debugger 
 > with the following error:
 > 
 >   pool_get: rndsample: curpage NULL, nitems 7
 >   panic: pool_get: nitems inconsistent

Looks like interrupts aren't being blocked when they should be.

 > I've seen a few messages go past indicating that option rnd is associated 
 > with obscure bugs so I rebuilt the kernel without rnd.  I haven't 
 > had any strange problems since then. 
 > 
 > Can anybody give me a summary of the rnd problems?  Did I just skim 
 > through the critical message? 

The rnd code was unblocking interrupts at inappropriate times.

 > Is the problem well understood?  Anybody interested in a dump?  I've 
 > got one from the above panic on 1.4 with the new pciide.  If so, 
 > tell me what to type or... 

It's well-understood, and the fix will appear in 1.4.1.  As a quick
hack, you can change all instances of splsoftclock() in rnd.c to
splsoftnet().

        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>