On 2 Jan 1998 explorer@flame.org wrote:

: I can reliably crash my machine after adding more memory, for a total
: of 128M in SDRAM DIMMS.  It happens when a program is using nearly all
: the ram, and a good deal of the swap.

What's the panic message?

: 	(1)  Is this likely bad memory, or
: 	(2)  Is NetBSD unable to handle running out of swap?

Possibly, and yes.  Though I've been told that this has happened before and
is a problem with running out of static data areas in core (as per my
previous question about the panic message).

: On the first crash, I had less swap than ram (96M swap, 128M ram) but
: on the second crash I had another 128M in a vnd file added to the swap.

In 1.3 (and -current), you don't need to vnd a file to make it swap.
swapctl(8,2) work with files directly now.

: The error (which flashed by my screen fast, and I have no crash dump)
: mentioned "changebit" or something with "change" and "bit" in it.  ;)

Make your kernel with 'makeoptions DEBUG="-g"', keep the "netbsd.gdb" file
around, and make sure "savecore=ON" in rc.conf.  Having a core file around
would help immensely, and you'd be able to use gdb to look at the possible
causes. 

=====
===== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Business tv@lucent.com) =====
== "There's a myth that there is a scarcity of justice to go around, so
== that if we extend justice to 'those people,' it will somehow erode the
== quality of justice everyone else receives."  -- Maria Price