>Number:         1882
>Category:       port-i386
>Synopsis:       Continuous Bus Errors, e.g. with systat -swap
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    gnats-admin (GNATS administrator)
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Tue Jan  2 14:20:01 1996
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Mike Witte
>Organization:
None applicable
>Release:        1.1
>Environment:
	Cyrix DX4-100, PCI-motherboard, EIDE-Controller with 1.2GB hdd and NCD controller with NEC CD-ROM 
	and 50MB Quantum, 8MB RAM, 256kB Cache, 4 com-ports, NE2000 comp. Ethernet card. Running 
	NetBSD/i386 1.1.
System: NetBSD galileo.rhein.de 1.1 NetBSD 1.1 (galileo) #29: Sun Dec 31 15:14:49 MET 1995 root@galileo.rhein.de:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/galileo i386


>Description:
	I keep getting Bus Errors continuously. Some examples how to get them:
	- Running systat -swap will over short or long give a line 
	  like 'Error in kvm_read: Bad Address', and a little bit later, there
	  will be either a segmentation fault with core dump or a bus error. 
	  This sympthom seems independent of system activity, swap space 
	  usage and the likes. Also, the time upto how long systat runs 		  _without_ crashing varies from some minutes to some hours.
	- Running some configure scripts also causes Bus errors, especially  
	  during the perl5.001 
	  Configure script, output was somewhat like
	      'Looking for xyz - not found'
	      'Bus Error - Core dumped',
	  even if the specified program is present. 
	  The program causing the Bus Errors in this 
	  case seems to be sh.
	- NetScape from time to time produces Bus Errors , too. 
	  E.g. I simply start it, do 
	  something else on another computer, and when I 
	  return and move the mouse-pointer back over
	  netscape's window, netscape quits with a Bus Error and a core dump.

>How-To-Repeat:
	see Description.
>Fix:
	check the routines used e.g. by systat and have a closer look at the associated kernel routines.	
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: