On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 02:20:16PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:


So actually I can confirm the 'sysinst' bug aswell.
When I was installing NetBSD 1.5ZC 3 weeks ago the pax process got
sig segv while installing games.tgz.
The installation procedure failed. I dont remember if the sigsegv was
received before extracting the next set or in the middle of extracting
the actuall set. I was quite suprised but I tried it once again and the
problem disappeared. The machine was running OpenBSD for the last two
years and I had no problem with RAM or sigsegv (except of the buggy
programs). I assume that there is somewhere a bug in the sysinst binary.

I can confirm the 'bug' in the pms driver aswell.
After an hour or so the ps2 mouse gets unusable and every attempt to move
the mouse generates a 'pms: reseting mouse interface' error.


Milos

> On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 03:35:27PM +0200, Thomas Runge wrote:
> > > On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 07:46:28PM +1000, Murray Armfield wrote:
> > 
> > > Although, can anybody explain why those kernels usually fail?
> > 
> > Smells a bit like the mystical Sig11 problem:
> > 
> > http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/
> 
> Useful, but don't let it lead you to assume hardware failure every time
> you see a sig11 or similar problem.
> 
> The fact is, it's much easier to blame and fix hardware than it is to
> find obscure kernel and compiler bugs.
> 
> So, yes, check your hardware; most people forget this.  
> 
> However, I too have occasional problems with install kernels, especially
> FreeBSD, and on known good hardware.  I have always blamed this on kernel bugs
> simply because an install kernel has a lot more code in it than my custom
> kernels do.  I just assume it's an issue of exposing more bugs and dependency
> problems otherwise known as bugs.
> 
> If you have trouble with an install but your system runs fine after
> that--and you use all available memory and devices--then the problem is
> not likely to be your hardware. I have had many systems run fine for
> years, despite several problems during install, including the infamous
> sig11 bug.
> 
> > The problem gets even worse now that we have UBC integrated. We are now
> > using all available memory to cache data and faulty memory shows up quite
> > early.
> 
> I've found this does catch more systems with faulty memory.
> 
> Of course, it has also caught more kernel bugs too.
> 
> -- 
> UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza__________________________________shannon@widomaker.com
> 

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