Subject: Random hangs/crashes on 3100--anyone seen it?
To: None <port-pmax@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Ben Cottrell <benco@ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU>
List: port-pmax
Date: 07/13/1997 19:00:00
I wanted to wait a bit longer before telling people about this, because I'm
not quite up to date with -current, and I also wanted to see if I could
gather a little more information. But Jonathan is talking about a 1.3 code
freeze, so I figured I'd better put it on the table, at least.

My 3100 is running a -current kernel from about June 8 or 9, and it's been
experiencing some odd problems. With a frequency of about once every one or
two weeks, it either hangs or reboots without explanation.

When it reboots, by the time I've noticed it and descended the three flights
of stairs and unlocked the necessary doors to get to it, any panic message
that may have been there has scrolled off the screen. *grr*

When it hangs, it hangs in a rather odd, *incremental* fashion. What
happens is I'll be sitting typing at a shell, and that shell will
freeze, but other shells will be fine. Then another shell will freeze,
and then at a certain point, they all go at once.

At first I suspected filesystem problems--I know we had problems a while
ago with filesystems freezing up because a process was deadlocking while
looking up a vnode--but after further analysis, I can be hitting return
repeatedly at the shell, and not trying to do any file manipulation, and
it will still hang. My current guess is a VM problem, but without any way
to get a crash dump, it's a little hard to diagnose.

Anyone experienced this? Should I just sup a new kernel and it will go
away?

Thanks,
	~Ben