Subject: System Freeze
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org, current-users@netbsd.org>
From: Joseph Sarkes <joe@js1.jsnet>
List: current-users
Date: 07/17/2000 22:15:35
I am still occasionally getting a freeze of my system. In general
it seems to occur under heavy load during compile of /usr/src
(make build) along with a second activity like 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/junk bs=1024k count=50
another thing that seemed to trigger the event was a "w" command.

When the system freezes, i have NO response to the keyboard, no disk
activity, no access via telnet. Apparently interrupts are turned off.
There is NO evidence that the debugger has been entered, and it can
not be entered from the keyboard. 

1) Is there any effort being taken to find any bugs that cause this?

2) Can a NMI be used to enter the debugger in netbsd and get a trace
for debugging? If this can work, does anyone have a simple circuit to
debounce the interrupt signal from a switch that is proven to work properly?
I have used just a bare switch tacked to a tab on the NMI line of a card
in the isa bus in the past, but this wasn't too nice. Along with the fact
that this machine uses mostly pci cards, I don't know if the NMI works the
same any more. (Mickey soft used to be able to enter the debugger this way)

For those that need the info, this is a plain intel pentium 233-mmx
cpu with 64M memory on an asus triton 2 motherboard. If someone needs the
dmesg info, or anything else, I can email it (assuming the recipient isn't
blocking however my email is set up here)

-- 
Joseph Sarkes		jsarkes@tiac.net