Subject: Initial question
To: None <port-alpha@netbsd.org>
From: Michael Roark <roark@bitbox.org>
List: port-alpha
Date: 04/26/2000 10:02:07
I am new to BSD on Alpha and am going some experimenting. I have used both =
OpenBSD and NetBSD on i386 and have been impressed with both. I recently =
aquired a Dec AlphaServer 400 and decided to run *BSD. On a whim I decided =
to install OpenBSD (it was at the top of the CD stack). I have run into a =
strange problem and haven't been able to find any help on the OpenBSD side.=
 I am a bit disheartend by that and the lack of participation in Alpha =
development on the OpenBSD side.

The long and short is this: is there a fairly active Alpha NetBSD =
community? The ports page would indicate so, but here is where it should =
be. If so, I will do a reinstall before I get to actuallly using the =
machine. If you are curious I will paste in my post to the OpenBSD list =
below:

I recently installed 2.6 on an AlphaServer 400 (an AlphaStation in =
disguise). The install went smoothly and performance has been good. =
Earlier this week I saw a message on this list that mentioned httpd =
benchmarking with ab. I got curious and decided to run it against the =
Alpha. It crashed. I went to the server room, rebooted, ran it again and =
it crashed. I did some digging and found that there is a reliability patch =
that states that the "alpha kernel can possibly be crashed by a user." =
There is nothing further on it. I haven't applied the patch yet, but I =
wanted to know if what I was doing is relevant to this fix. Here are the =
particulars:

I ran ab with the following command:

ab -c 5000 -w <server address>

When the machine dumps I get this:

de0: receive: <mac address> bad crc
de0: receive: <mac address> alignment error
<duplicated 4 times>
panic: malloc: out of space in kmem_map

stopped at debugger +0x4:   ret            zero, (ra), 0x1
ddb>


I would love to know if this is specific to OpenBSD or if I am going to =
have the same issue under other *BSD's.

Thanks,

Michael