Subject: Re: Stability of 2.0_RCx?
To: Christian Groessler <cpg@aladdin.de>
From: Andy Ruhl <acruhl@gmail.com>
List: port-dreamcast
Date: 12/09/2004 13:05:04
On 09 Dec 2004 20:39:17 +0100, Christian Groessler <cpg@aladdin.de> wrote:
> Ok, an update.
> 
> I've tried with a 2.0 kernel and with the BBA instead of the LAN
> adapter and it still reboots. It happened while I was extracting a
> cross-compiled base.tgz (from nfs) over my root partition (also nfs).
> 
> I previously tried to extract the base.tgz with a LAN adapter and it
> rebooted, too.
> 
> The problem seems to be independent of the DC network card.
> 
> Matt, you wrote:
> 
> > Not seen anything on my Jornada (hpcsh). Been building stuff
> > on it quite
> > happily over an NFS root and swap, and it appears to have been up for
> > 80-odd days so far (quite by accident :-).
> 
> and Nick wrote
> 
> > I've been told that the sh4 specific cache handling is suspected.
> 
> 
> So I think it should also happen on your Jornada. Can you stress test
> it a bit? Try to extract base.tgz or another big archive over nfs,
> maybe repeatedly, and see whether it reboots or crashes.

There is a NetBSD-2.0 directory out on the FTP site with kernels and
userlands... It might make sense to use that instead of compiling your
own since that will be a known baseline. I keep meaning to set up an
nfs server with this stuff and boot the dreamcast (it's been a while
now) but I haven't done it. When (if) I get it running I'll do some
checking to see if it works.

Note that if you have a buggy network or network adapter, all bets are
off if you are swapping. With 16 megs of memory on the dreamcast, it's
probably very likely you are swapping. And I'm not sure you'd ever
know if the network was giving you problems unless you want to go
through a dump to find out...

Andy